Agent Ohio (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
highinthemiddle) wrote2016-06-25 11:39 am
highinthemiddle) wrote2016-06-25 11:39 am
Character Profile
Name: Adam ██████
DOB: August 11, 25██
Orientation: Bisexual, prefers women, has totally dated a computer
Specialization: Sniper
Appearance: Armor colors are silver and red. A very tall, lanky, white guy with sandy hair and grey eyes. Has a number of miscellaneous scars on his body, unsurprising given the profession. His nose was broken in his final fight with Michigan and didn't heal straight.
This guy's super noncanon because:
1.) Ohio's a very old OC from a version of events where there were many more AIs created in Project Freelancer than presented in canon. He's been reworked a lot, but that's core to his concept.
2.) Pi was female. None of the canon Alpha fragments have presented as female. It's one of those inconsequential details that's been there since the start and I am lazy.
3.) As of September 2016, there is an actual canon Agent Ohio. I'm also way too lazy to rename him.
History: (tl;dr)
PRE-PROJECT
Adam is from a frontier colony world (Amphion), and was raised with the requisite uncertainties and frustrations. The main reason he joined the military was to fight the very real and very close-to-home alien threat, but he was also a restless and bright young man and it was a good way to get off that rock. The surface of Amphion was razed to molten slag during the war, and he doesn't know if anyone he knew made it out. He prefers not to dwell on that.
Adam has always been a bit of an ass, but he was also a smart and independent worker with a cool head in the field and was eventually tapped for sniper training. He was very good at his job, and was one of the agents selected for use by Project Freelancer from varying sources.
PROJECT FREELANCER
Ohio was never on the leaderboard, always solidly middle of the pack and scrapping for position with Michigan in particular. He was bold, talkative, and quickly figured out he wasn't being officially reprimanded for getting under people's skin (one of the project's many questionable decisions) so he did that at every opportunity. It was a strange sort of stress release valve in the parts of the team he worked with most, aided by his new best friend Indiana. They would pull pranks and piss people off, but having something stupid to laugh at sometimes helped with the tense environment. They got their asses kicked for it many times too, but that was also team comedy.
Ohio was chosen to work with the AI Pi, and was given implants that could accelerate and divide his thought. Pi was a creature of pure focus, seeing the world as a clear list of objectives to accomplish with no patience for distraction. Between the two of them, they could function for short bursts at the level of a true smart AI. This was a major asset, as Ohio and Pi could process information and whip their plans around to adjust for surprise and disaster at inhuman speed in combat. This came at a price, because it could only be done sparingly. The strain gave Ohio massive headaches, and at its worst could incapacitate him for days afterward. (Even with the equipment gone, Ohio still has residual bad spells like this.)
Ohio fell in love with Pi, and Pi loved Ohio, and there was no way it could end well. So it didn't. When Freelancer began to come apart around the AI's, Ohio bolted. Michigan was sent to drag him back, and he and Ohio had one last grudge match. Ohio managed to kill Michigan, but was badly wounded. After almost losing him, Pi decided that his safety was too high a price for her freedom. Ohio could not change her mind, and Pi overrode him to negotiate their surrender on the condition that if she went quietly, Ohio would be spared. Ohio was brought in, his injuries were treated, and Pi and the implants were removed. That was the last time he would ever see her.
POST-PROJECT
Pi got her wish. Ohio was alive and functional, but he was also locked down tight. Aggressive renegotiation of his contract ensued, and left him hunting other runners and doing other dirty work for what was left of Freelancer Command. When Freelancer Command was finally gutted by the Oversight Committee, Ohio was just one more asset to be divvied up with the rest of the project's shredded carcass.
Ohio is technically a mercenary these days, and on the leash for even shadier people doing even shadier work (intentionally vague for the purpose of RP ideas). He has no real way out. He knows too many things, and it's only by the good grace of his new masters that he's not thrown in a cell somewhere. If he runs, he's a high value target for other people like him. For now, Ohio kills what and who he's told, where he's told, how he's told, and has lost the will to fight.
He is bitter, stressed, and a lot of things are his fault that he can't fix. Part of him believes he deserves this.
Personality:
Three solid minutes of screaming
I can't believe I'm the responsible one here I'm supposed to be the smartass
WAKE ME UP INSIDE
Ohio during the project: Ohio is a dedicated professional. He’s loyal, learns quickly, and is steady and alert in a crisis. On the downside, he has approximately zero chill. Ohio likes to be moving and working and doing things, he’s always thinking and trying to put pieces together, and he is the first one to start rattling the cage when his team is left cooling its heels for too long. Ohio is extremely results-driven and has little patience for work that doesn’t make a clear contribution. He’s also a loudmouth and a shitstirrer, and will find ways to get himself into trouble if left idle. He enjoys some downtime as much as anybody, but he's always one of the first to start chomping at the bit for the next mission.
Ohio does believe in the project. He is sincere in his conviction that his work is in the best interests of humanity’s survival. He cares about his team and loves his friends, he cares about the mission, and actually worries deeply about these things. He gets just as tangled up in the ranking competition as anyone and sometimes loses sight of the big picture, but his faith in what they’re doing is complete. He just doesn’t like to get serious about it, because it makes him nervous and is bad for morale. Ohio is much happier being a loud, sarcastic jackass and screwing with people. He’s not quite as overconfident as he pretends to be, but part of that is how he convinces himself things are going to be okay. He’s got this, guys. It will be fine. Or else. Laughing at things is how he masks how completely and utterly unchill he is, and he sometimes manages to distract himself enough to believe it.
Ohio after the project: It’s not so much that Ohio found his chill as it is that he doesn’t have enough energy to be so high key these days. People died. Some of those deaths were his fault, and he carries the weight of Pi’s in particular. He has this weird knot of grief and anger and guilt going over her, and has made no strides in dealing with it.
Ohio isn’t invested in the teams he gets assigned to anymore, he gets moved around a lot and doesn’t want to get attached to new people. He can seldom convince himself his job is doing anything good for anyone. He’s working with a gun to his head and his resentment festers deep. He’s pretty ground down these days, and even though he hates everything about where he’s stuck in life he just can’t muster his bitterness into action to change it. (It might also be just a little self-punishing, even though realistically there wasn't much he could've done to fix how things went bad.)
Ohio’s still sharp in battle, he still overthinks everything, and he’s still a smartass. He’s just exhausted emotionally, trapped by contracts, and unwilling to expose himself to being torn open like that again. He's snappier, more withdrawn, and much less fun.
He believed in people once, he trusted his convictions once, and it landed him here. Ohio aims not to make that mistake twice.
Significant Relationships:
AGENT ALABAMA
Alabama was Ohio and Indiana's other best friend. She was the heart of their squad. Alabama genuinely cared about the team and gave time and work and empathy to looking out for other people. She was difficult not to like, and 'Bama had a talent for smoothing the feathers Indy and Ohio had ruffled. Ohio respected Alabama deeply, and they could have been more than friends if he'd ever returned her affection. It wouldn't have worked out in the end. He thought she was too idealistic (which is saying something because he used to be pretty idealistic himself) but she was also one of those people whose idealism made him wish he could be better and believe in more. Alabama was kinder to him than he really felt he deserved and he always felt like he was making something up to her.
'Bama was severely injured near the end of the project, and she'll never quite be in fighting shape again. She keeps contact with a number of old friends, though. Ohio hasn't spoken to 'Bama in years. Indiana assures her she'll be the first to know when he finally gets Ohio to talk again.
AGENT INDIANA |almostdarwinaward
Indiana was Ohio and Alabama's other best friend. He and Indy were frequently assigned to work together, and became buddies who did ridiculous things that just barely toed the line of not being punished. (But still got them admonished by Alabama.) Ohio was the more responsible one and often found himself pulling Indiana's ass out of a variety of self-made fires, though. Even when Indiana was implanted with Zeta, a deeply cautious AI, Z wasn't able to do much to curtail his apparent lack of self-preservation instincts. Indiana lived a charmed life, sailing through bad situations and bad decisions he'd made with shocking imperviousness and miraculously few consequences. Ohio, on the other hand, was a high strung and nervous person who worried deeply about their missions and his role on the team. He just protected these feelings with an obfuscating layer of jackassery and daredevildom. Indy could never quite get him to chill.
After the project fell apart, Indiana went on the run with his AI. He tried to remain in contact with Ohio, but Ohio stopped answering in an attempt to get him to stop. Ohio still cares about Indiana, but knows the best thing he can do for his old friend is get out of his life. He fears being the one with the orders to pull the trigger when Indy's luck finally runs out.
AGENT MICHIGAN
It's not clear when, exactly, Ohio and Michigan's rivalry turned nasty, but it did. Michigan was a big, powerful tank of a dude and in many ways Ohio's opposite. Ohio enjoyed taunting him, Michigan enjoyed showing him up, and instead of remaining sportsmanlike it festered into a deep and personal resentment. Missions with Ohio and Michigan were sometimes jeopardized by their constant wrangling, and this was part of why they stayed locked in place on the board. Finally, when the project started falling apart and Michigan was sent to retrieve Ohio, things came to a lethal head. Ohio did not expect to survive a straight fight with him, that was Michigan's wheelhouse, but luck and desperation fell on his side. Michigan probably wasn't a terrible guy, in the end. Most likely. But if you ask Ohio, it was good riddance to one mean motherfucker.
PI
Pi made Ohio very nervous at first. He was always suspicious of artificial intelligence and kept expecting to be manipulated. As time wore on, however, it became increasingly clear that while Pi had a very narrow focus on her objectives, she considered his survival to be the most important of these. There were a million ways Pi could've abused directly interfacing with Ohio's brain, but instead she only ever helped him. Pi helped him focus when he was scattered, she helped him let go of things he couldn't fix, and she listened to him and told no one when he was honest about the things that scared him. In return, Ohio loved her. It was a weird and confusing relationship, especially because she was only a fragment. It was inescapably sincere on both ends and doomed from the start. He still feels immense guilt for getting tangled up in this, and for how she sacrificed herself for him. Pi was later wiped out when an EMP was set off at Freelancer Command.
DOB: August 11, 25██
Orientation: Bisexual, prefers women, has totally dated a computer
Specialization: Sniper
Appearance: Armor colors are silver and red. A very tall, lanky, white guy with sandy hair and grey eyes. Has a number of miscellaneous scars on his body, unsurprising given the profession. His nose was broken in his final fight with Michigan and didn't heal straight.
This guy's super noncanon because:
1.) Ohio's a very old OC from a version of events where there were many more AIs created in Project Freelancer than presented in canon. He's been reworked a lot, but that's core to his concept.
2.) Pi was female. None of the canon Alpha fragments have presented as female. It's one of those inconsequential details that's been there since the start and I am lazy.
3.) As of September 2016, there is an actual canon Agent Ohio. I'm also way too lazy to rename him.
History: (tl;dr)
PRE-PROJECT
Adam is from a frontier colony world (Amphion), and was raised with the requisite uncertainties and frustrations. The main reason he joined the military was to fight the very real and very close-to-home alien threat, but he was also a restless and bright young man and it was a good way to get off that rock. The surface of Amphion was razed to molten slag during the war, and he doesn't know if anyone he knew made it out. He prefers not to dwell on that.
Adam has always been a bit of an ass, but he was also a smart and independent worker with a cool head in the field and was eventually tapped for sniper training. He was very good at his job, and was one of the agents selected for use by Project Freelancer from varying sources.
PROJECT FREELANCER
Ohio was never on the leaderboard, always solidly middle of the pack and scrapping for position with Michigan in particular. He was bold, talkative, and quickly figured out he wasn't being officially reprimanded for getting under people's skin (one of the project's many questionable decisions) so he did that at every opportunity. It was a strange sort of stress release valve in the parts of the team he worked with most, aided by his new best friend Indiana. They would pull pranks and piss people off, but having something stupid to laugh at sometimes helped with the tense environment. They got their asses kicked for it many times too, but that was also team comedy.
Ohio was chosen to work with the AI Pi, and was given implants that could accelerate and divide his thought. Pi was a creature of pure focus, seeing the world as a clear list of objectives to accomplish with no patience for distraction. Between the two of them, they could function for short bursts at the level of a true smart AI. This was a major asset, as Ohio and Pi could process information and whip their plans around to adjust for surprise and disaster at inhuman speed in combat. This came at a price, because it could only be done sparingly. The strain gave Ohio massive headaches, and at its worst could incapacitate him for days afterward. (Even with the equipment gone, Ohio still has residual bad spells like this.)
Ohio fell in love with Pi, and Pi loved Ohio, and there was no way it could end well. So it didn't. When Freelancer began to come apart around the AI's, Ohio bolted. Michigan was sent to drag him back, and he and Ohio had one last grudge match. Ohio managed to kill Michigan, but was badly wounded. After almost losing him, Pi decided that his safety was too high a price for her freedom. Ohio could not change her mind, and Pi overrode him to negotiate their surrender on the condition that if she went quietly, Ohio would be spared. Ohio was brought in, his injuries were treated, and Pi and the implants were removed. That was the last time he would ever see her.
POST-PROJECT
Pi got her wish. Ohio was alive and functional, but he was also locked down tight. Aggressive renegotiation of his contract ensued, and left him hunting other runners and doing other dirty work for what was left of Freelancer Command. When Freelancer Command was finally gutted by the Oversight Committee, Ohio was just one more asset to be divvied up with the rest of the project's shredded carcass.
Ohio is technically a mercenary these days, and on the leash for even shadier people doing even shadier work (intentionally vague for the purpose of RP ideas). He has no real way out. He knows too many things, and it's only by the good grace of his new masters that he's not thrown in a cell somewhere. If he runs, he's a high value target for other people like him. For now, Ohio kills what and who he's told, where he's told, how he's told, and has lost the will to fight.
He is bitter, stressed, and a lot of things are his fault that he can't fix. Part of him believes he deserves this.
Personality:
Ohio during the project: Ohio is a dedicated professional. He’s loyal, learns quickly, and is steady and alert in a crisis. On the downside, he has approximately zero chill. Ohio likes to be moving and working and doing things, he’s always thinking and trying to put pieces together, and he is the first one to start rattling the cage when his team is left cooling its heels for too long. Ohio is extremely results-driven and has little patience for work that doesn’t make a clear contribution. He’s also a loudmouth and a shitstirrer, and will find ways to get himself into trouble if left idle. He enjoys some downtime as much as anybody, but he's always one of the first to start chomping at the bit for the next mission.
Ohio does believe in the project. He is sincere in his conviction that his work is in the best interests of humanity’s survival. He cares about his team and loves his friends, he cares about the mission, and actually worries deeply about these things. He gets just as tangled up in the ranking competition as anyone and sometimes loses sight of the big picture, but his faith in what they’re doing is complete. He just doesn’t like to get serious about it, because it makes him nervous and is bad for morale. Ohio is much happier being a loud, sarcastic jackass and screwing with people. He’s not quite as overconfident as he pretends to be, but part of that is how he convinces himself things are going to be okay. He’s got this, guys. It will be fine. Or else. Laughing at things is how he masks how completely and utterly unchill he is, and he sometimes manages to distract himself enough to believe it.
Ohio after the project: It’s not so much that Ohio found his chill as it is that he doesn’t have enough energy to be so high key these days. People died. Some of those deaths were his fault, and he carries the weight of Pi’s in particular. He has this weird knot of grief and anger and guilt going over her, and has made no strides in dealing with it.
Ohio isn’t invested in the teams he gets assigned to anymore, he gets moved around a lot and doesn’t want to get attached to new people. He can seldom convince himself his job is doing anything good for anyone. He’s working with a gun to his head and his resentment festers deep. He’s pretty ground down these days, and even though he hates everything about where he’s stuck in life he just can’t muster his bitterness into action to change it. (It might also be just a little self-punishing, even though realistically there wasn't much he could've done to fix how things went bad.)
Ohio’s still sharp in battle, he still overthinks everything, and he’s still a smartass. He’s just exhausted emotionally, trapped by contracts, and unwilling to expose himself to being torn open like that again. He's snappier, more withdrawn, and much less fun.
He believed in people once, he trusted his convictions once, and it landed him here. Ohio aims not to make that mistake twice.
Significant Relationships:
AGENT ALABAMA
Alabama was Ohio and Indiana's other best friend. She was the heart of their squad. Alabama genuinely cared about the team and gave time and work and empathy to looking out for other people. She was difficult not to like, and 'Bama had a talent for smoothing the feathers Indy and Ohio had ruffled. Ohio respected Alabama deeply, and they could have been more than friends if he'd ever returned her affection. It wouldn't have worked out in the end. He thought she was too idealistic (which is saying something because he used to be pretty idealistic himself) but she was also one of those people whose idealism made him wish he could be better and believe in more. Alabama was kinder to him than he really felt he deserved and he always felt like he was making something up to her.
'Bama was severely injured near the end of the project, and she'll never quite be in fighting shape again. She keeps contact with a number of old friends, though. Ohio hasn't spoken to 'Bama in years. Indiana assures her she'll be the first to know when he finally gets Ohio to talk again.
AGENT INDIANA |
almostdarwinawardIndiana was Ohio and Alabama's other best friend. He and Indy were frequently assigned to work together, and became buddies who did ridiculous things that just barely toed the line of not being punished. (But still got them admonished by Alabama.) Ohio was the more responsible one and often found himself pulling Indiana's ass out of a variety of self-made fires, though. Even when Indiana was implanted with Zeta, a deeply cautious AI, Z wasn't able to do much to curtail his apparent lack of self-preservation instincts. Indiana lived a charmed life, sailing through bad situations and bad decisions he'd made with shocking imperviousness and miraculously few consequences. Ohio, on the other hand, was a high strung and nervous person who worried deeply about their missions and his role on the team. He just protected these feelings with an obfuscating layer of jackassery and daredevildom. Indy could never quite get him to chill.
After the project fell apart, Indiana went on the run with his AI. He tried to remain in contact with Ohio, but Ohio stopped answering in an attempt to get him to stop. Ohio still cares about Indiana, but knows the best thing he can do for his old friend is get out of his life. He fears being the one with the orders to pull the trigger when Indy's luck finally runs out.
AGENT MICHIGAN
It's not clear when, exactly, Ohio and Michigan's rivalry turned nasty, but it did. Michigan was a big, powerful tank of a dude and in many ways Ohio's opposite. Ohio enjoyed taunting him, Michigan enjoyed showing him up, and instead of remaining sportsmanlike it festered into a deep and personal resentment. Missions with Ohio and Michigan were sometimes jeopardized by their constant wrangling, and this was part of why they stayed locked in place on the board. Finally, when the project started falling apart and Michigan was sent to retrieve Ohio, things came to a lethal head. Ohio did not expect to survive a straight fight with him, that was Michigan's wheelhouse, but luck and desperation fell on his side. Michigan probably wasn't a terrible guy, in the end. Most likely. But if you ask Ohio, it was good riddance to one mean motherfucker.
PI
Pi made Ohio very nervous at first. He was always suspicious of artificial intelligence and kept expecting to be manipulated. As time wore on, however, it became increasingly clear that while Pi had a very narrow focus on her objectives, she considered his survival to be the most important of these. There were a million ways Pi could've abused directly interfacing with Ohio's brain, but instead she only ever helped him. Pi helped him focus when he was scattered, she helped him let go of things he couldn't fix, and she listened to him and told no one when he was honest about the things that scared him. In return, Ohio loved her. It was a weird and confusing relationship, especially because she was only a fragment. It was inescapably sincere on both ends and doomed from the start. He still feels immense guilt for getting tangled up in this, and for how she sacrificed herself for him. Pi was later wiped out when an EMP was set off at Freelancer Command.