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Application for Thisavrou
OUT OF CHARACTER
Player Name: Marti
Are you 16 or older: Yes
Contact:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
martienne martienne17 at gmail.com, martienne17 on Skype
Current Characters: n/a
Tag: Agent Texas
IN CHARACTER
Name: Agent Texas | Allison | Beta
Canon: Red vs. Blue
Canon Point: As the EMP goes off and deletes the AIs in the Meta.
Age: Unknown, but probably less than 2. Mentally, however, she is equivalent to a human in her 20s.
History: Note, the story of Red vs. Blue began as a fanfiction machinima video series based on the Halo universe. As such the story follows Halo canon at many points, although there are a few things that don’t fit Halo canon that RvB glosses over.
At its core Red vs. Blue is the story of a military program known as Project Freelancer. The program was one of many that the United Nations Space Command, or UNSC, funded to attempt to win a long protracted war against a coalition of alien races. Things were looking desperate for humankind and so though Project Freelancer pushed the lines of what was legal and ethical, it was able to retain its funding.
The project was meant to test the use of specialized combat AI units to be paired with the operatives, which were called freelancers as the name of the program would suggest. However, the project was only able to obtain permission and funding to create one AI. The founder of the project, Dr. Leonard Church, chose to create the AI from a copy of his own mind. This AI was designated Alpha and was used at first to run the ship’s systems and create combat scenarios.
Something unexpected happened during Alpha’s creation, however. Director Church had once had a woman in his life, named Allison, who died in a military incursion when his and Allison’s daughter was young. Whether they were married or not is unknown, but she was dear enough to the Director that the memories he held of her in his mind actually split off as another piece of code. This AI was preserved and designated Beta. Beta did not remember who or what she was after her creation, but the Director’s memories of Allison cast her as an incredible fighter and soldier. He began sending her in as a shadow operative, and in her first mission followed up the work of the lead team by setting charges on the oil platform that had been used as the mission’s evac point.
The success of this mission led to the Director choosing to make Beta’s inclusion more official. Like the other freelancers, she was given a code name that corresponded to a US state—in her case, Texas—and a robot body. He chose to introduce her to her fellow agents by arranging a three-on-one match in the training room. While agents York, Wyoming, and Maine battled against her, other agents watched from the observation deck. Texas did indeed prove to be a skilled and formidable fighter, and won round after round in fighting, including such trials as pugil sticks, hand-to-hand, and simulation paint rounds.
It was during the ninth round of fighting that Wyoming and Maine took an option the Director had given them—using actual live ammunition. York was shocked at this when he realized what was going on and attempted to mediate a ceasefire, but with everyone else dodging and shooting, he was put into danger several times. Texas even scolded him to stop trying to help her and advised him, “Never abandon your team.” However, he didn’t listen and Texas had to go out of her way to protect him from his own teammates. At a crucial point, when Texas believed she had won the round and began to approach York, who was stunned on the floor, Maine threw a grenade in her direction. She dodged the throw, but this led to the grenade landing very near York. Unable to do anything else from the distance she stood, she fired the simulation paint rounds at him, coating the right side of his armor in it. The behavior of the paint was to create a hardened coating for a short period of time, so this was enough to protect parts of his armor from the blast when the grenade exploded. However, it shattered the left side of his helmet, causing an injury to his left eye.
A major factor in the way the Project was carried out was its inclusion of a leaderboard, which kept track of how the agents ranked in their particular abilities. Until now, Agent Carolina had been at the top, with York in second place, but the top few places changed in the aftermath—Texas in first, Carolina second, and York moving further down because of his failure to keep from being injured
Even with the team upset at the recent happenings, a new mission was assigned to retrieve a shipping container from a tall building. The team did their best to complete the objective, but when they arrived at the evac point on top of a tall building, Agent Texas had been sent in to once again destroy the target.
Agent Carolina, who was leading the team, approached her, upset that Texas had been sent in as a lone wolf on what was supposed to be a team effort, but she didn’t have much time to debate the point as the enemy forces approach. The transmitter Texas had been planting signaled to the Project’s ship to fire its weapons, and all the Freelancers in the LZ had to bail quickly. Texas was the only one of the freelancers who had been pre-prepared for this eventuality with a jetpack, and she kicked the container off the roof and jumped.
The agents continued to work, now aiming to complete the secondary objective of retrieving the briefcase that contained the lock codes for the shipping container. Carolina was now determined to best Texas and raced her to reach the goal, heedless of the danger she was in because of the vehicles that were rushing by on the highway. Texas beat Carolina there when Carolina was run over by a semi truck—her armor saved her from serious injury, but she was slowed too much to continue. Texas grabbed the briefcase and called for extraction, then turned and wished Carolina better luck next time.
Amongst all this, the Director had gotten an idea about how to obtain more AIs to further the research he wished to carry out with the agents. The memories of Allison had split off of Alpha—could he also split the AI in the manner of a human mind, splitting via traumatic experiences? He invented scenarios that would be equivalent to torture for the AI. During the last mission Agent Maine had been injured in such a way that he would never be able to speak again. The first two AIs, Delta and Sigma, were assigned to York and Maine to assist them with their new disabilities.
Not long after, Agent Connecticut defected. She had taken her high tech suit of armor with her and the agents were sent to retrieve her, or at least her armor, to secure the experimental technology from enemy hands. Once again Texas was sent in separately, rushing in headlong when the rest of the team was pinned down. Carolina hurriedly followed her, putting herself at risk in running into the heat of gunfire, but she made it to where Texas was waiting outside the room Connecticut was in. Carolina called York to cut the power so that she and Texas could enter the room without risking injury from the turrets that guarded the room.
Inside, Texas commanded Connecticut to surrender her armor, but Connecticut told Texas she knew what Texas was and that she wouldn’t take orders from a shadow. Confused and offended, Texas asked, “What did you call me?” But the confrontation boiled over and in the ensuing fight Texas drove an axe into Connecticut’s abdomen. Connecticut was able to escape onto the waiting ship but died moments later.
AI implantation continued, and Carolina chose time and again to defer receiving an AI. Her reasons were many but everyone knew the main reason was that she was trying to prove to herself she could be as good as Texas without assistance. But one day, Maine’s AI Sigma and Wyoming’s AI Gamma approached her in the locker room to inform her that Texas had been paired with her own AI, Omega. Carolina became angry, certain that her father the Director had been playing her. She went into the training room, where Texas was in the middle of telling the Counselor she was suffering from pent-up aggression, and insisted on receiving the next two AIs simultaneously.
She was implanted with the AIs not long after and insisted on an impromptu match against Texas. Texas fended Omega off when he tried to assist her in preparing for the fight, but otherwise didn’t try to hold back the full power of her fighting style. But as the match began the Director appeared on the observation deck, asking what was going on. No one was able to answer—before anyone spoke up, he rushed forward, distressed at seeing his pet AI squaring off against his daughter. He called out Allison’s name. The AIs reacted violently to this outburst. They began screaming in their hosts’ minds, and the agents who had been assigned AIs fell to the floor, gripping their heads in pain. Carolina received the worst brunt of this, since she had two AIs. Texas yelled for help from the training room floor, but no one did anything. The Director, instead of choosing to help Carolina, said what had happened was her own fault and left. Texas resisted Omega’s idea that she should snap Carolina’s neck, and instead out of pity for Carolina knocked her out.
Things were coming to a head now. Just before the match Texas had found a micro storage drive that she now took to a computer to see what files it contained. The information on the drive consisted of a video Connecticut had recorded before her defection, explaining that Texas was a copy of Allison and that the Alpha AI had been tortured. Even as she explored the information that Connecticut had also included on the drive, Agent Washington was being implanted with Epsilon, the most recent AI that had been created. Unknown to the Counselor or Director, Epsilon contained all of Alpha’s memories of the Director’s life and of Alpha’s torture. Washington collapsed, screaming, overwhelmed with the horrible things he was seeing.
Texas was spurred into action now. She convinced Agent York, who had had his suspicions, to defect with her, and once they were prepared they returned to rescue Carolina, Washington, and Alpha. Carolina, however, was now up and around, and had been convinced by her father that the two former agents needed to be captured. York, trying to create a distraction, caused the ship to fire upon itself, and it began to crash as Texas and Carolina had a final confrontation. Neither of them won the fight, as they were both ejected from the ship when it came to a halt on the planet below.
Carolina was no longer in the control room with Texas, and so Texas was able to open a session with the Alpha AI, entering his virtual environment. This was when Texas learned that almost every element of what made up Alpha’s core self, including his memories, had been split off. Alpha declined to go with her and instead of insisting she told him to rest and left.
The Director had been concealing another secret—Agent Maine had been convinced by his AI Sigma that all the AIs needed to be reunited. He had been blaming the actions of Maine on Texas, which was how he had convinced Carolina to try to capture Texas. But now after the crash, Maine was able to approach Carolina and rip the computer chips that contained her AIs from her implantation slots. He threw Carolina off the nearby cliff and Texas rushed forward, screaming, “No!” But she quickly recognized that Maine would desire to integrate her into his collection of AIs and she chose to turn and run away.
This was Tex’s canon point when she arrived on the Moira the first time. She was mysteriously placed in a human body when she arrived on the ship, but wasn’t on board long enough to figure out what had happened to make that possible, nor what had happened to Omega.
After this, canon is a bit unclear as to what Tex was up to during her time on the run. There’s also a major shift in tone between the Freelancer prequels and the Blood Gulch Chronicles—Blood Gulch was primarily a comedy series that didn’t try to explain the odd events that took place. Alpha, going by Church and believing himself to be a soldier in the Blue army, was assigned to a base on Sidewinder. While he was there, Tex attacked and killed the other troops, sparing him. Later, Church was taken to a canyon base called Blood Gulch, under the care of Texas’s former colleague Agent Florida. Florida was killed not long before the events of the Blood Gulch Chronicles took place, leading to the assignment of a rookie, Caboose, to the Blue Team. Red Team was also sent a rookie, who cluelessly made his way to the Blue Base and nabbed the Blue flag. In the midst of their attempt to retrieve the flag, Caboose shot Church with the tank. Church, disembodied, could only come to the conclusion that he was a ghost, unaware of his actual status as an AI. When he appeared to Tucker and Caboose, Church warned them that they shouldn’t let Tex get involved in the situation. However, Tucker decided to call headquarters and have a Freelancer sent in to help with the situation they were dealing with. For unknown reasons, Tex was still in the Freelancer systems, and she arrived shortly after.
Tex headed to the Red Base to get the Blue flag, sticking a grenade to the rookie Donut’s head. But when she ended up getting captured by the hapless Red soldiers, Church ‘possessed’ a soldier for the first time, taking over Sarge’s body to release Tex. She readily accepted Church’s explanation that he was a ghost, escaping with him, and then agreeing to stay long enough to fix the tank, known as Sheila. Church comes up with a plan to help the Reds defeat her so that she won’t leave—Church is invested in saving her from Omega, and though he doesn’t have a plan for how to do that, he feels doing this will give him enough time to come up with a way. Omega overhears the plans, however, and jumps to Caboose’s armor. Tex finished fixing the tank and jumped in it to make her way to the Red Base. Church found he was unable to warn the Red Team that she was coming, however, because he possessed their helper robot Lopez, which was only programmed to speak Spanish. Donut saw Tex coming and threw a grenade at the tank, blowing Tex’s body up.
Tex decided to spend the next few months observing the teams in the canyon instead of possessing someone’s body the way Church had done. Eventually, Church decided to leave Lopez so they could convince the robot to fix Sheila. This was tricky, but eventually the robot complied. Tex possessed Lopez’s body before Church could retake him, however. She explained to everyone that she had noticed Caboose’s strange behavior since her ‘death’ and knew because of it that Omega, calling himself O’Malley, had taken Caboose as a host. She insisted that they help her kill O’Malley. This would involve making sure everyone in the canyon had turned their radios off while she and Church went into Caboose’s head to flush O’Malley out. The two of them left Tucker and Lopez to take care of convincing the Reds to turn their radios off. Everything seems to go off without a hitch and Church and Tex shoot O’Malley dead in Caboose’s mindscape. Unfortunately the medic, Doc, was somewhere outside the canyon using his radio to call Command, leading to O’Malley being able to possess him.
Tex disappeared again after this, but Church negotiated for Sarge to build two robot bodies for himself and Tex anyway. In the meantime, Tucker intercepted a transmission that caused him to realize the Reds and Blues answered to the same Command. Before he could share this information, the canyon was attacked by Doc and O’Malley. Doc ran into the Reds’ teleporter after taking Lopez hostage, leading the troops in the canyon to call a truce and team up to pursue him. Donut, Tucker, Sheila, and the spare robot were left behind while everyone else headed into the teleporter. As soon as they disappeared, Tex took over the spare robot.
Not long after this, Tex picked up a notice from the network that a fellow Freelancer, Wyoming, had been hired by O’Malley to assassinate Tucker. She offered to take out Wyoming in exchange for the favor she still owed Tucker because of him helping her take out O’Malley. Those who had used the teleporter had been experiencing problems with the teleporters sending them different places, but they eventually located Doc and O’Malley and called for Tex, Donut, and Tucker to come assist them. Sarge had booby-trapped Church’s robot body with a bomb, and in the chaos Caboose had accidentally set it. The soldiers then reunited to attempt to beat O’Malley, but everything was disrupted when the bomb in Church’s body went off.
Everyone was separated at this point, blown to different places, and Tex went off alone to figure out where O’Malley and Doc went. Once she located them, she radioed for any soldier from Blood Gulch to assist her. Sarge intercepted the transmission and followed the coordinates she broadcasted out of a desire to rescue Lopez, and the battle plans his programming contained. Once they all arrive, Tucker found a glowing alien sword, which Tex tried to steal from him. The sword locked to Tucker when he picked it up, however, so it didn’t work for her. They infiltrated O’Malley’s base, but O’Malley simply attacked from the outside, sending in a robot army he had had Lopez build. Red Team takes off for Blood Gulch, while the Blues are left to deal with the alien that had arrived to try to claim the glowing sword.
After learning the sword was locked to Tucker, the alien struck a deal with Tex to give her the sword after they helped him complete a mission tied to a prophecy he wanted to fulfill. After Tucker used the sword as a key to open a fortress, the alien double-crossed them and ran off with a vehicle that was stored inside. Wyoming emerged from inside and Tex took off in pursuit of him. She tracked him to another base, but Wyoming eluded her again. So in order to get inside, she tracked down her friend York from the Project. York was an infiltration specialist, so he was able to crack the lock and get them inside. However, he died in the ensuing firefight. With assistance from York’s AI, Delta, Tex manages to grab Wyoming and steal his helmet, thereby getting a hold of O’Malley’s coordinates from his logs.
In the time Tex was gone, the Blues were sent a new teammate at Blood Gulch, Sister. Tex attacked, certain O’Malley had jumped into one of the residents of the canyon. Wyoming arrived, though, and revealed to Tex that he had a plan with O’Malley that would defeat the aliens. Tucker had been implanted with a parasitic alien embryo, and the alien he had birthed could be infected with O’Malley and used to take over the alien religion. Though Church says this plan is despicable, Tex changed sides immediately, turning her radio on and allowing O’Malley to return to her. She stole the ship that Sister had arrived in, which was implanted with another Freelancer AI, Gamma, and took off in it. Sarge had secretly planted a bomb on the ship, though Church had asked him to find a way to prevent Tex from leaving, and Sarge set the bomb off. When the ship had gone far above the canyon, the bomb exploded, and Tex disappeared from view.
Due to the time-distortion unit in Wyoming’s helmet, which Tex had brought on board, the ship teleported a year into the future and crashed at Valhalla, another location where Red and Blue bases were located. Maine, now hosting a collective of Freelancer AIs that called itself the Meta, tracked her down, and captured her along with Gamma and Omega. Now part of the collective, Tex took part as the Meta tracked Delta, who had been picked up by Recovery Agent Washington. Washington teamed up with the Reds and Blues in an attempt to find the Meta, with the thought that their experience with Omega would lead to greater knowledge in how to track the Meta down. However, Washington eventually leads the Meta to Freelancer Headquarters on the planet, to lure the collective with the promise of meeting the Alpha. In the meantime he reveals to Church that he actually is the Alpha. Washington has the Reds and Blues escape with Epsilon while he confronts the Meta with Alpha. Alpha joins their collective and mere moments pass before he sets an electromagnetic pulse off in the facility, leading to the deletion of Church, Tex, and all the other AIs.
Personality: Texas is at her core a manifestation of Allison’s memory as Leonard Church saw her. This is why she’s referred to as a shadow—it’s inevitable that Leonard couldn’t properly interpret every element of Allison’s personality, nor the way she had gone about her job as a soldier.
At her core, Texas is independent and inscrutable—she doesn’t share her thoughts or emotions with others easily. She knows she’s overpowered compared to the other agents, but though she takes pride in her abilities, she doesn’t rub them in the other agents’ faces. On her end, the rivalry with Carolina is taken good-naturedly—when she wishes Carolina luck on the highway, her body language is cocky but her tone is not arrogant or mocking. She again wishes Carolina luck when Carolina insists on receiving two AIs. She’s kind to Carolina after the incident on the training room floor, as well—when Carolina falls to the floor, she offers her hand to help Carolina up, which Carolina bats away.
Texas’s major turning point is the moment when she sits down and absorbs Connecticut’s evidence. Until then, she had apparently not questioned why she was kept separate from everyone else, or why she was overpowered compared to them. In fact, the only time she expressed her emotions was upon questioning from the Counselor, when she mentioned her desire to go out and fight and complained about feeling overly aggressive. But when she witnesses the files Connecticut had left behind her body language changes. She finds Allison’s picture and thoughtfully caresses the image with her hand. After this she goes among the other agents, expressing concern for Carolina and carrying on a conversation with Agent North Dakota about the trouble some other agents seemed to be in because of the AI implantations.
She does have an indelible connection to Leonard and his AI descendants, Alpha and Epsilon in particular. She doesn’t shake this off—it’s notable that despite her disapproval of what Leonard did, she doesn’t take Connecticut’s evidence to the authorities, choosing instead to dismantle his work herself. She also doesn’t come after him after the ship crashes, choosing instead to save herself from the possibility that she may be captured.
Tex’s dry sense of humor is seen when she interacts with a group of simulation soldiers later on. Someone asks her which state she represented among the Freelancers, even though he knows everyone calls her Tex, and she replies with Nevada in a deadpan tone. When Sister arrives, Texas spends time conversing with her, gossiping about the other soldiers.
When Omega threatens the simulation soldiers, Texas works to protect them, but when she learns she might be able to help win the war between the humans and aliens if she teams up with him, she’s immediately willing to do so. This shows her sense of duty, despite any affection she might feel for people she considers her friends.
Abilities/Skills: Texas is an adept fighter at hand-to-hand and excellent marksman. Being an AI in a robot body, she can out-calculate her opponents’ moves and react before they can. She’s also very powerful, able to buckle a part of the hull of the ship when she punches it.
Strengths/Weaknesses: Tex is skilled at vehicle repair and weapons maintenance, stating at one point that she always liked cars. She’s also very athletic by human standards, able to leap and flip with ease. She doesn’t make a good negotiator since she tends to be a shoot first, ask questions later type of person. Though she’s sympathetic in some ways, she doesn’t cut people any slack for mistakes.
Items: Tex’s canon point is at her death in a collective of AIs. Being disembodied, she has nothing with her.
SAMPLES
Network Sample:
[ It almost seems inevitable when she finds herself on the Moira again. She hadn’t remembered being here when she was pursuing Omega on the planet where the simulation bases were, but now that she’s back it seems almost poetic. Captured by the Meta against her will, made to participate in Sigma’s schemes— the reunion with Church would have seemed to be a fitting end to all that. But here she is, just another cog in the wheel of the lack of choices she’s been forced to suffer through in the time she’s been in existence.
When she gets her communicator she clicks it on and shoots off a text. ]
I see nothing much has changed since I’ve been gone. Looking to trade favors with anyone who’s got skills and needs work done.
Prose/Action Sample:
Tex awakens, and immediately a few things are clear. She’s back in the human body she was in on the Moira. It follows, then, that she must be on the Moira itself. The MID is on her hand, and she pulls on the duty uniform the ship had supplied her with, just like the last time. She never had worked out what happened to Omega the last time she was here, and in this circumstance there were a lot more AIs to keep track of if she wanted to learn what had really happened. After all, why would they transport her and her only to this place? Delta, Sigma, Omega—all of them would be valuable equipment for those who ran this ship to acquire. So her first move is to arise and be on the lookout for them.
When she had been here before she had applied for a job as transporter technician, desiring to learn if there were any signatures or other information she could pull from the records to learn if Omega had been brought here in addition to her. This time she doesn’t bother to apply—she’d learned enough about them to be satisfied that this time she could get into the records on her own and find the information she desired. She headed down to the transporter bay and pulled the panel off the wall. At this point she doesn’t really have a plan for if she gets caught messing around in this equipment—she’ll take that outcome as it comes. If someone walks in, well, maybe they’ll just get a fist to the face just to get them knocked out and out of the way.
It’s not long before Tex realizes this tack isn’t getting her anywhere though. She doesn’t actually have the equipment she needs to take care of it properly. In the end, she decides to assume Omega and the others are being held in the computer system somewhere, and behave accordingly.
Are you 16 or older: Yes
Contact:
Current Characters: n/a
Tag: Agent Texas
IN CHARACTER
Name: Agent Texas | Allison | Beta
Canon: Red vs. Blue
Canon Point: As the EMP goes off and deletes the AIs in the Meta.
Age: Unknown, but probably less than 2. Mentally, however, she is equivalent to a human in her 20s.
History: Note, the story of Red vs. Blue began as a fanfiction machinima video series based on the Halo universe. As such the story follows Halo canon at many points, although there are a few things that don’t fit Halo canon that RvB glosses over.
At its core Red vs. Blue is the story of a military program known as Project Freelancer. The program was one of many that the United Nations Space Command, or UNSC, funded to attempt to win a long protracted war against a coalition of alien races. Things were looking desperate for humankind and so though Project Freelancer pushed the lines of what was legal and ethical, it was able to retain its funding.
The project was meant to test the use of specialized combat AI units to be paired with the operatives, which were called freelancers as the name of the program would suggest. However, the project was only able to obtain permission and funding to create one AI. The founder of the project, Dr. Leonard Church, chose to create the AI from a copy of his own mind. This AI was designated Alpha and was used at first to run the ship’s systems and create combat scenarios.
Something unexpected happened during Alpha’s creation, however. Director Church had once had a woman in his life, named Allison, who died in a military incursion when his and Allison’s daughter was young. Whether they were married or not is unknown, but she was dear enough to the Director that the memories he held of her in his mind actually split off as another piece of code. This AI was preserved and designated Beta. Beta did not remember who or what she was after her creation, but the Director’s memories of Allison cast her as an incredible fighter and soldier. He began sending her in as a shadow operative, and in her first mission followed up the work of the lead team by setting charges on the oil platform that had been used as the mission’s evac point.
The success of this mission led to the Director choosing to make Beta’s inclusion more official. Like the other freelancers, she was given a code name that corresponded to a US state—in her case, Texas—and a robot body. He chose to introduce her to her fellow agents by arranging a three-on-one match in the training room. While agents York, Wyoming, and Maine battled against her, other agents watched from the observation deck. Texas did indeed prove to be a skilled and formidable fighter, and won round after round in fighting, including such trials as pugil sticks, hand-to-hand, and simulation paint rounds.
It was during the ninth round of fighting that Wyoming and Maine took an option the Director had given them—using actual live ammunition. York was shocked at this when he realized what was going on and attempted to mediate a ceasefire, but with everyone else dodging and shooting, he was put into danger several times. Texas even scolded him to stop trying to help her and advised him, “Never abandon your team.” However, he didn’t listen and Texas had to go out of her way to protect him from his own teammates. At a crucial point, when Texas believed she had won the round and began to approach York, who was stunned on the floor, Maine threw a grenade in her direction. She dodged the throw, but this led to the grenade landing very near York. Unable to do anything else from the distance she stood, she fired the simulation paint rounds at him, coating the right side of his armor in it. The behavior of the paint was to create a hardened coating for a short period of time, so this was enough to protect parts of his armor from the blast when the grenade exploded. However, it shattered the left side of his helmet, causing an injury to his left eye.
A major factor in the way the Project was carried out was its inclusion of a leaderboard, which kept track of how the agents ranked in their particular abilities. Until now, Agent Carolina had been at the top, with York in second place, but the top few places changed in the aftermath—Texas in first, Carolina second, and York moving further down because of his failure to keep from being injured
Even with the team upset at the recent happenings, a new mission was assigned to retrieve a shipping container from a tall building. The team did their best to complete the objective, but when they arrived at the evac point on top of a tall building, Agent Texas had been sent in to once again destroy the target.
Agent Carolina, who was leading the team, approached her, upset that Texas had been sent in as a lone wolf on what was supposed to be a team effort, but she didn’t have much time to debate the point as the enemy forces approach. The transmitter Texas had been planting signaled to the Project’s ship to fire its weapons, and all the Freelancers in the LZ had to bail quickly. Texas was the only one of the freelancers who had been pre-prepared for this eventuality with a jetpack, and she kicked the container off the roof and jumped.
The agents continued to work, now aiming to complete the secondary objective of retrieving the briefcase that contained the lock codes for the shipping container. Carolina was now determined to best Texas and raced her to reach the goal, heedless of the danger she was in because of the vehicles that were rushing by on the highway. Texas beat Carolina there when Carolina was run over by a semi truck—her armor saved her from serious injury, but she was slowed too much to continue. Texas grabbed the briefcase and called for extraction, then turned and wished Carolina better luck next time.
Amongst all this, the Director had gotten an idea about how to obtain more AIs to further the research he wished to carry out with the agents. The memories of Allison had split off of Alpha—could he also split the AI in the manner of a human mind, splitting via traumatic experiences? He invented scenarios that would be equivalent to torture for the AI. During the last mission Agent Maine had been injured in such a way that he would never be able to speak again. The first two AIs, Delta and Sigma, were assigned to York and Maine to assist them with their new disabilities.
Not long after, Agent Connecticut defected. She had taken her high tech suit of armor with her and the agents were sent to retrieve her, or at least her armor, to secure the experimental technology from enemy hands. Once again Texas was sent in separately, rushing in headlong when the rest of the team was pinned down. Carolina hurriedly followed her, putting herself at risk in running into the heat of gunfire, but she made it to where Texas was waiting outside the room Connecticut was in. Carolina called York to cut the power so that she and Texas could enter the room without risking injury from the turrets that guarded the room.
Inside, Texas commanded Connecticut to surrender her armor, but Connecticut told Texas she knew what Texas was and that she wouldn’t take orders from a shadow. Confused and offended, Texas asked, “What did you call me?” But the confrontation boiled over and in the ensuing fight Texas drove an axe into Connecticut’s abdomen. Connecticut was able to escape onto the waiting ship but died moments later.
AI implantation continued, and Carolina chose time and again to defer receiving an AI. Her reasons were many but everyone knew the main reason was that she was trying to prove to herself she could be as good as Texas without assistance. But one day, Maine’s AI Sigma and Wyoming’s AI Gamma approached her in the locker room to inform her that Texas had been paired with her own AI, Omega. Carolina became angry, certain that her father the Director had been playing her. She went into the training room, where Texas was in the middle of telling the Counselor she was suffering from pent-up aggression, and insisted on receiving the next two AIs simultaneously.
She was implanted with the AIs not long after and insisted on an impromptu match against Texas. Texas fended Omega off when he tried to assist her in preparing for the fight, but otherwise didn’t try to hold back the full power of her fighting style. But as the match began the Director appeared on the observation deck, asking what was going on. No one was able to answer—before anyone spoke up, he rushed forward, distressed at seeing his pet AI squaring off against his daughter. He called out Allison’s name. The AIs reacted violently to this outburst. They began screaming in their hosts’ minds, and the agents who had been assigned AIs fell to the floor, gripping their heads in pain. Carolina received the worst brunt of this, since she had two AIs. Texas yelled for help from the training room floor, but no one did anything. The Director, instead of choosing to help Carolina, said what had happened was her own fault and left. Texas resisted Omega’s idea that she should snap Carolina’s neck, and instead out of pity for Carolina knocked her out.
Things were coming to a head now. Just before the match Texas had found a micro storage drive that she now took to a computer to see what files it contained. The information on the drive consisted of a video Connecticut had recorded before her defection, explaining that Texas was a copy of Allison and that the Alpha AI had been tortured. Even as she explored the information that Connecticut had also included on the drive, Agent Washington was being implanted with Epsilon, the most recent AI that had been created. Unknown to the Counselor or Director, Epsilon contained all of Alpha’s memories of the Director’s life and of Alpha’s torture. Washington collapsed, screaming, overwhelmed with the horrible things he was seeing.
Texas was spurred into action now. She convinced Agent York, who had had his suspicions, to defect with her, and once they were prepared they returned to rescue Carolina, Washington, and Alpha. Carolina, however, was now up and around, and had been convinced by her father that the two former agents needed to be captured. York, trying to create a distraction, caused the ship to fire upon itself, and it began to crash as Texas and Carolina had a final confrontation. Neither of them won the fight, as they were both ejected from the ship when it came to a halt on the planet below.
Carolina was no longer in the control room with Texas, and so Texas was able to open a session with the Alpha AI, entering his virtual environment. This was when Texas learned that almost every element of what made up Alpha’s core self, including his memories, had been split off. Alpha declined to go with her and instead of insisting she told him to rest and left.
The Director had been concealing another secret—Agent Maine had been convinced by his AI Sigma that all the AIs needed to be reunited. He had been blaming the actions of Maine on Texas, which was how he had convinced Carolina to try to capture Texas. But now after the crash, Maine was able to approach Carolina and rip the computer chips that contained her AIs from her implantation slots. He threw Carolina off the nearby cliff and Texas rushed forward, screaming, “No!” But she quickly recognized that Maine would desire to integrate her into his collection of AIs and she chose to turn and run away.
This was Tex’s canon point when she arrived on the Moira the first time. She was mysteriously placed in a human body when she arrived on the ship, but wasn’t on board long enough to figure out what had happened to make that possible, nor what had happened to Omega.
After this, canon is a bit unclear as to what Tex was up to during her time on the run. There’s also a major shift in tone between the Freelancer prequels and the Blood Gulch Chronicles—Blood Gulch was primarily a comedy series that didn’t try to explain the odd events that took place. Alpha, going by Church and believing himself to be a soldier in the Blue army, was assigned to a base on Sidewinder. While he was there, Tex attacked and killed the other troops, sparing him. Later, Church was taken to a canyon base called Blood Gulch, under the care of Texas’s former colleague Agent Florida. Florida was killed not long before the events of the Blood Gulch Chronicles took place, leading to the assignment of a rookie, Caboose, to the Blue Team. Red Team was also sent a rookie, who cluelessly made his way to the Blue Base and nabbed the Blue flag. In the midst of their attempt to retrieve the flag, Caboose shot Church with the tank. Church, disembodied, could only come to the conclusion that he was a ghost, unaware of his actual status as an AI. When he appeared to Tucker and Caboose, Church warned them that they shouldn’t let Tex get involved in the situation. However, Tucker decided to call headquarters and have a Freelancer sent in to help with the situation they were dealing with. For unknown reasons, Tex was still in the Freelancer systems, and she arrived shortly after.
Tex headed to the Red Base to get the Blue flag, sticking a grenade to the rookie Donut’s head. But when she ended up getting captured by the hapless Red soldiers, Church ‘possessed’ a soldier for the first time, taking over Sarge’s body to release Tex. She readily accepted Church’s explanation that he was a ghost, escaping with him, and then agreeing to stay long enough to fix the tank, known as Sheila. Church comes up with a plan to help the Reds defeat her so that she won’t leave—Church is invested in saving her from Omega, and though he doesn’t have a plan for how to do that, he feels doing this will give him enough time to come up with a way. Omega overhears the plans, however, and jumps to Caboose’s armor. Tex finished fixing the tank and jumped in it to make her way to the Red Base. Church found he was unable to warn the Red Team that she was coming, however, because he possessed their helper robot Lopez, which was only programmed to speak Spanish. Donut saw Tex coming and threw a grenade at the tank, blowing Tex’s body up.
Tex decided to spend the next few months observing the teams in the canyon instead of possessing someone’s body the way Church had done. Eventually, Church decided to leave Lopez so they could convince the robot to fix Sheila. This was tricky, but eventually the robot complied. Tex possessed Lopez’s body before Church could retake him, however. She explained to everyone that she had noticed Caboose’s strange behavior since her ‘death’ and knew because of it that Omega, calling himself O’Malley, had taken Caboose as a host. She insisted that they help her kill O’Malley. This would involve making sure everyone in the canyon had turned their radios off while she and Church went into Caboose’s head to flush O’Malley out. The two of them left Tucker and Lopez to take care of convincing the Reds to turn their radios off. Everything seems to go off without a hitch and Church and Tex shoot O’Malley dead in Caboose’s mindscape. Unfortunately the medic, Doc, was somewhere outside the canyon using his radio to call Command, leading to O’Malley being able to possess him.
Tex disappeared again after this, but Church negotiated for Sarge to build two robot bodies for himself and Tex anyway. In the meantime, Tucker intercepted a transmission that caused him to realize the Reds and Blues answered to the same Command. Before he could share this information, the canyon was attacked by Doc and O’Malley. Doc ran into the Reds’ teleporter after taking Lopez hostage, leading the troops in the canyon to call a truce and team up to pursue him. Donut, Tucker, Sheila, and the spare robot were left behind while everyone else headed into the teleporter. As soon as they disappeared, Tex took over the spare robot.
Not long after this, Tex picked up a notice from the network that a fellow Freelancer, Wyoming, had been hired by O’Malley to assassinate Tucker. She offered to take out Wyoming in exchange for the favor she still owed Tucker because of him helping her take out O’Malley. Those who had used the teleporter had been experiencing problems with the teleporters sending them different places, but they eventually located Doc and O’Malley and called for Tex, Donut, and Tucker to come assist them. Sarge had booby-trapped Church’s robot body with a bomb, and in the chaos Caboose had accidentally set it. The soldiers then reunited to attempt to beat O’Malley, but everything was disrupted when the bomb in Church’s body went off.
Everyone was separated at this point, blown to different places, and Tex went off alone to figure out where O’Malley and Doc went. Once she located them, she radioed for any soldier from Blood Gulch to assist her. Sarge intercepted the transmission and followed the coordinates she broadcasted out of a desire to rescue Lopez, and the battle plans his programming contained. Once they all arrive, Tucker found a glowing alien sword, which Tex tried to steal from him. The sword locked to Tucker when he picked it up, however, so it didn’t work for her. They infiltrated O’Malley’s base, but O’Malley simply attacked from the outside, sending in a robot army he had had Lopez build. Red Team takes off for Blood Gulch, while the Blues are left to deal with the alien that had arrived to try to claim the glowing sword.
After learning the sword was locked to Tucker, the alien struck a deal with Tex to give her the sword after they helped him complete a mission tied to a prophecy he wanted to fulfill. After Tucker used the sword as a key to open a fortress, the alien double-crossed them and ran off with a vehicle that was stored inside. Wyoming emerged from inside and Tex took off in pursuit of him. She tracked him to another base, but Wyoming eluded her again. So in order to get inside, she tracked down her friend York from the Project. York was an infiltration specialist, so he was able to crack the lock and get them inside. However, he died in the ensuing firefight. With assistance from York’s AI, Delta, Tex manages to grab Wyoming and steal his helmet, thereby getting a hold of O’Malley’s coordinates from his logs.
In the time Tex was gone, the Blues were sent a new teammate at Blood Gulch, Sister. Tex attacked, certain O’Malley had jumped into one of the residents of the canyon. Wyoming arrived, though, and revealed to Tex that he had a plan with O’Malley that would defeat the aliens. Tucker had been implanted with a parasitic alien embryo, and the alien he had birthed could be infected with O’Malley and used to take over the alien religion. Though Church says this plan is despicable, Tex changed sides immediately, turning her radio on and allowing O’Malley to return to her. She stole the ship that Sister had arrived in, which was implanted with another Freelancer AI, Gamma, and took off in it. Sarge had secretly planted a bomb on the ship, though Church had asked him to find a way to prevent Tex from leaving, and Sarge set the bomb off. When the ship had gone far above the canyon, the bomb exploded, and Tex disappeared from view.
Due to the time-distortion unit in Wyoming’s helmet, which Tex had brought on board, the ship teleported a year into the future and crashed at Valhalla, another location where Red and Blue bases were located. Maine, now hosting a collective of Freelancer AIs that called itself the Meta, tracked her down, and captured her along with Gamma and Omega. Now part of the collective, Tex took part as the Meta tracked Delta, who had been picked up by Recovery Agent Washington. Washington teamed up with the Reds and Blues in an attempt to find the Meta, with the thought that their experience with Omega would lead to greater knowledge in how to track the Meta down. However, Washington eventually leads the Meta to Freelancer Headquarters on the planet, to lure the collective with the promise of meeting the Alpha. In the meantime he reveals to Church that he actually is the Alpha. Washington has the Reds and Blues escape with Epsilon while he confronts the Meta with Alpha. Alpha joins their collective and mere moments pass before he sets an electromagnetic pulse off in the facility, leading to the deletion of Church, Tex, and all the other AIs.
Personality: Texas is at her core a manifestation of Allison’s memory as Leonard Church saw her. This is why she’s referred to as a shadow—it’s inevitable that Leonard couldn’t properly interpret every element of Allison’s personality, nor the way she had gone about her job as a soldier.
At her core, Texas is independent and inscrutable—she doesn’t share her thoughts or emotions with others easily. She knows she’s overpowered compared to the other agents, but though she takes pride in her abilities, she doesn’t rub them in the other agents’ faces. On her end, the rivalry with Carolina is taken good-naturedly—when she wishes Carolina luck on the highway, her body language is cocky but her tone is not arrogant or mocking. She again wishes Carolina luck when Carolina insists on receiving two AIs. She’s kind to Carolina after the incident on the training room floor, as well—when Carolina falls to the floor, she offers her hand to help Carolina up, which Carolina bats away.
Texas’s major turning point is the moment when she sits down and absorbs Connecticut’s evidence. Until then, she had apparently not questioned why she was kept separate from everyone else, or why she was overpowered compared to them. In fact, the only time she expressed her emotions was upon questioning from the Counselor, when she mentioned her desire to go out and fight and complained about feeling overly aggressive. But when she witnesses the files Connecticut had left behind her body language changes. She finds Allison’s picture and thoughtfully caresses the image with her hand. After this she goes among the other agents, expressing concern for Carolina and carrying on a conversation with Agent North Dakota about the trouble some other agents seemed to be in because of the AI implantations.
She does have an indelible connection to Leonard and his AI descendants, Alpha and Epsilon in particular. She doesn’t shake this off—it’s notable that despite her disapproval of what Leonard did, she doesn’t take Connecticut’s evidence to the authorities, choosing instead to dismantle his work herself. She also doesn’t come after him after the ship crashes, choosing instead to save herself from the possibility that she may be captured.
Tex’s dry sense of humor is seen when she interacts with a group of simulation soldiers later on. Someone asks her which state she represented among the Freelancers, even though he knows everyone calls her Tex, and she replies with Nevada in a deadpan tone. When Sister arrives, Texas spends time conversing with her, gossiping about the other soldiers.
When Omega threatens the simulation soldiers, Texas works to protect them, but when she learns she might be able to help win the war between the humans and aliens if she teams up with him, she’s immediately willing to do so. This shows her sense of duty, despite any affection she might feel for people she considers her friends.
Abilities/Skills: Texas is an adept fighter at hand-to-hand and excellent marksman. Being an AI in a robot body, she can out-calculate her opponents’ moves and react before they can. She’s also very powerful, able to buckle a part of the hull of the ship when she punches it.
Strengths/Weaknesses: Tex is skilled at vehicle repair and weapons maintenance, stating at one point that she always liked cars. She’s also very athletic by human standards, able to leap and flip with ease. She doesn’t make a good negotiator since she tends to be a shoot first, ask questions later type of person. Though she’s sympathetic in some ways, she doesn’t cut people any slack for mistakes.
Items: Tex’s canon point is at her death in a collective of AIs. Being disembodied, she has nothing with her.
SAMPLES
Network Sample:
[ It almost seems inevitable when she finds herself on the Moira again. She hadn’t remembered being here when she was pursuing Omega on the planet where the simulation bases were, but now that she’s back it seems almost poetic. Captured by the Meta against her will, made to participate in Sigma’s schemes— the reunion with Church would have seemed to be a fitting end to all that. But here she is, just another cog in the wheel of the lack of choices she’s been forced to suffer through in the time she’s been in existence.
When she gets her communicator she clicks it on and shoots off a text. ]
I see nothing much has changed since I’ve been gone. Looking to trade favors with anyone who’s got skills and needs work done.
Prose/Action Sample:
Tex awakens, and immediately a few things are clear. She’s back in the human body she was in on the Moira. It follows, then, that she must be on the Moira itself. The MID is on her hand, and she pulls on the duty uniform the ship had supplied her with, just like the last time. She never had worked out what happened to Omega the last time she was here, and in this circumstance there were a lot more AIs to keep track of if she wanted to learn what had really happened. After all, why would they transport her and her only to this place? Delta, Sigma, Omega—all of them would be valuable equipment for those who ran this ship to acquire. So her first move is to arise and be on the lookout for them.
When she had been here before she had applied for a job as transporter technician, desiring to learn if there were any signatures or other information she could pull from the records to learn if Omega had been brought here in addition to her. This time she doesn’t bother to apply—she’d learned enough about them to be satisfied that this time she could get into the records on her own and find the information she desired. She headed down to the transporter bay and pulled the panel off the wall. At this point she doesn’t really have a plan for if she gets caught messing around in this equipment—she’ll take that outcome as it comes. If someone walks in, well, maybe they’ll just get a fist to the face just to get them knocked out and out of the way.
It’s not long before Tex realizes this tack isn’t getting her anywhere though. She doesn’t actually have the equipment she needs to take care of it properly. In the end, she decides to assume Omega and the others are being held in the computer system somewhere, and behave accordingly.