North Dakota

You've reached Agent North Dakota. I'm a little busy right now, but leave me a message. I'll get back to you as soon as possible.

But we aren't busy.

We will be if I'm not answering the phone.

Oh!

[Hearty laughter from North.] Why don't you say goodbye, Theta?

Goodbye!

〈 PLAYER INFO 〉
NAME: Marie
AGE: Old as Moses' toes and twice as corny. (I'm 29 forever).
JOURNAL: This one or backinakidflash is fine.
IM / EMAIL: seemarierun AT gmail DOT com
PLURK: seemarierun
RETURNING: Yes (Current: Bart Allen)

〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉
CHARACTER NAME: Agent North Dakota. Any normal name would be headcanon, but it's probably something a lot less exciting.
CHARACTER AGE: Somewhere around 27-32, judging by the canon age of Agent Carolina. A specific age would limit anyone considering South Dakota.
SERIES: Red vs. Blue
CHRONOLOGY: Season 10, Episode "Party Crasher"
CLASS: Hero, will consider registration.
HOUSING: No preference.

BACKGROUND:

Red vs. Blue is set in a world that is based off of the Halo universe, but most of that Halo stuff doesn't really matter in terms of the game. Here's what matters:

UNSC is still the United Nations Space Command. Think of it as a Star Fleet-esque entity, it is the umbrella under which the military, government scientific research, and exploration/colonization occur.

In Halo, the UNSC were at war with an alien race for reasons that don't matter because it never comes up in Red vs. Blue. In "the present" of seasons 9 and 10 RvB, the war is long over and the aliens and humans have an uneasy sort of relationship. In the past (North's time), it was still ongoing.

At some point, the UNSC decided that they were going to allow an experiment that combined both the scientific and military wings. It was called "Project Freelancer", and it was spearheaded by Dr. Leonard Church ('the Director'). The Freelancers were very skilled soldiers, presumably well-tested and studied both physically and psychologically, before they were admitted to the program. 50 recruits were seemingly stripped of names and housed together at a facility, trained together, ate together. Most of them did not survive. In fact, at the time point of the Freelancer storyline, only 10 are shown as active, among these Freelancers were Agent North Dakota and his sister Agent South Dakota.

The Freelancers were to be a new breed of soldier, if you will. The best of the best, aided with experimental technology and AI to help them run them.

Except, the Director was only able to acquire one AI that he was willing to work with, Alpha. As all AIs in this universe are created by copying a human mind/personality, it is somewhat important to mention that the Director used himself as the template. Alpha accidentally created a second AI, Beta/"Agent Texas", that he was far less willing to experiment with - or on, as the case was. From that point on, one AI was not going to be enough for his plans.

But no fear, he already had a team of prized soldiers, and the Director thought he might know a way to make more AI without the expense of actually making more AI, which the UNSC would not fund.

First, there is our introduction to Agent North Dakota and his more impulsive twin sister South Dakota. They are sent on a secret mission to steal intel, with North acting as cover and eyes for South's infiltration. She screws up, and he tries to intervene and pull her ass out of the fire. Agent Carolina (and Agent Texas, as later revealed) become involved to ensure the success of the mission, to the chagrin of the Dakotas.

With the acquired intel, the Director sent two squads of Freelancers to steal 'the Sarcophagus' with only the vaguest of instructions (two locations and the symbol that would be inscribed on the otherwise detail-less Sarcophagus). Keeping the Freelancers in the dark and relying on their military training to keep them in line was a recurring theme. Agent North Dakota was chosen to lead the second squad, but his squad failed their mission due to taking casualties and becoming penned down by enemy fire. Given that his three person team included the Freelancer later identified as a traitor, it is unsurprising that his part of the mission failed. The primary squad completed both sides of the mission.

The Director and the Counselor proceeded to use the Huragok that was inside the Sarcophagus to rip apart the Alpha AI by psychologically torturing it to reverse-engineer a sort of multiple personality disorder. As parts of Alpha's mind, such as its logic, were overwhelmed or threatened the Alpha's sanity, Alpha essentially jettisoned them. They were preserved as tiny, limited AI fragmants with much less three-dimensional personalities. In their initial confusion, they were given new names and told it was their birthday, as they had just been created. The hope was to keep the existence of Alpha a secret.

Shortly after this, the Freelancers began to be selected for implantation with 'AI fragmants' that were deemed compatible or complementary to their personalities. Agent North Dakota was not the first to get his AI, but he was among the first. Theta, his youthful AI (who according to Rooster Teeth represents the Alpha AI's trust) quickly endeared himself to North, and the two worked very well together. North does not know where Theta came from, despite being made to take a class on AIs.

Further missions that followed exposed the Agent Connecticut to be a rebel traitor, and all the while more and more agents were being implanted with AIs. Project Freelancer began to make North uncomfortable, particularly when several of his teammates used live rounds in a training session and were not reprimanded for it.

Training sessions, in fact, are where the real damage to Project Freelancer always seems to happen. A late night discussion with Agent York lets North know that it is not just his own AI, Theta, who is having anxiety issues. North also says something about the AI himself that later comes back to haunt him in a way: "Maybe they know something we don't." Another training session, not much later, causes a massive headache for most of the Freelancers. An impromptu battle between Agent Carolina and Agent Texas draws a crowd, including most of the other Freelancers. When the Director bursts into the room screaming the name Allison, it causes the implanted AIs of all agents to freak out, shouting the name Allison over and over. Most of the agents, including North, collapse as a result. Agent Carolina, who has two AI at that point, winds up in the infirmary.

The incident is inexplicable to North, although he tries to figure it out often. He knows then that Project Freelancer is actively keeping major information from its agents, and it no longer seems like classified intel like the contents of the Sarcophagus. It is information pertaining directly to the AI that they are implanting in people like North, and doesn't he have a right to know what he is completely getting into?

He does turn overtly insubordinate is during Agent Texas' break-in of the Freelancer facility. At this point, he and Theta have begun warming up to the agent, and three points combine to make North suspect that all is not well in Project Freelancer. Theta's questioning and anxiety about the Alpha, which to the agents and most AI fragments is only a theoretical original AI, York's pondering about where the AI fragments come from and whether Project Freelancer are "the good guys", and the curious Allison incident... the one that involved Agent Texas. Regardless of the exact reason, North refuses to believe South's story about Texas going rogue and murdering Wyoming for his AI.

Agent North Dakota is a very good soldier. When an order is bad, you don't follow the order. You have to make your own call in that case. While he probably would have liked to go to a commanding officer and report the strange occurrances, he was not given that option. Project Freelancer was kept far away from the UNSC as a whole. The only option that he had was to let Texas accomplish her mission in hopes of bringing some scandal to light.

Unfortunately, this forced him to serve as a diversion for his sister, who is jealous of both him and Agent Texas. Both of them rank higher than her and already have undergone AI implantation. When he finds South attempting to stop and kill Texas, North knows what he has to do. He doesn't like it, but he'd rather be the one to fight South than leave her to Agent Texas. Tex, he knows, will not be gentle.

That's where he'll be pulled from, when he squares off against his sister.

Oh, and one last thing about the universe. Somewhere on a stupid, seemingly otherwise deserted planet there is a box canyon. It is the most important place in the universe, despite all evidence to the contrary. North has never been there, although he's been to similar locations where the dumbest space marines imaginable are fighting a war that never existed in order to provide training situations for the elite Freelancers.

It's there that the Director hid the Alpha, but, to North, the Alpha will forever remain a mystery. (Unless, you know, Church shows up and introduces himself).


PERSONALITY:

Above all else, the most prominent feature of North's personality is his caring nature. This is shown again and again, in the way he looks after Theta almost as one would a son, and in his careful dance of looking-out-for and giving-space when dealing with his prickly twin, Agent South Dakota.

North will put himself in danger to protect his sister and others. He took a bullet to the gut pushing his sister out of the way to safety, and, on the same mission, he could've killed himself activating his armor enhancement without an AI to properly run it. Instead, Agent North was able to produce an energy shield around the Pelican (... space plane) and maintain it for several seconds, saving them all from a missile attack. This was not only a physical risk, but a career risk. He admits to Agent Washington that he has taken some heat about using his equipment in the field without permission.

He is a decent judge of character, but North puts too much faith in others being as responsible and upstanding as he is. He isn't naive, but the concept of Project Freelancer being the bad guys leaves him speechless the first time the idea is brought up to him.

While he is obviously competent enough to qualify for the Project and to consistently rank in the top 6 Freelancers, Agent North Dakota was never considered to be one of the best. He does seem frustrated, though, to the Director's inclusion of Agent Carolina to his stealth mission with his sister, but he lacks the fly-in-the-teeth-of-it spirit of his sister and other Freelancers.

He prefers doing things in a more careful, less splashy way. It doesn't matter if you set records so long as you accomplish the mission. This makes him one of the steadier Freelancers, and he has had higher ranked Freelancers placed under his command for missions. He is presumably a good leader. Agent North Dakota's responses to situations are generally textbook and traditional. When things went bad for his team during the Sarcophagus retrieval mission, he did not strike out on his own and risk his life and equipment or those of his teammates. Unlike the Freelancers on the other squad, whose overly competitive natures push them to actions that he sees as insane.

He's a nice guy out of the uniform. He's got a sense of humor, and he's quite friendly. He'll unironically visit you in the infirmary (this is a rarity in RvB - most people visit to bitch about the injured person). North is the sort of person who everyone wants to sit with at lunch, to have a beer with at happy hour.

That being said, he's a space marine, and a good one. He will not hesitate to kill during a mission, and he's shown himself capable of mowing down dozens of targets in one evening with no signs of PTSD. That everyone is wearing armor probably helps him dissociate from the act.

POWER:

1. North is in possession of a full set of MJOLNIR Mark VI armor which is generally similar to how it appears to function in the Halo games. It is a powered body armor that can be further upgraded with attachments and artificial intelligences. There IS a lockdown mode that will offer additional protection from heavy blasts, impacts, or artillery that comes at the expense of any and all movement. The armor is also capable of other handy military things, like monitoring the wearer's vital statistics, providing infrared scanning, and having motion sensors and trackers. Freelancer armor also comes standard with grav boots, which basically function like suction cup shoes in Looney Toons cartoons.

It is most likely that the Freelancers have had the carbide ceramic ossification process done, which allows the human body to carry the weight of a 1000 pound armored suit. Although in Red vs. Blue, they give out the armor like lollipops at a pediatrician's.

2. Domed energy shield armor enhancement. I'm listing this separately as it is a non-standard option. While in his armor, North is capable of creating a spherical energy shield. He has been shown being able to maintain it for several seconds without the use of his AI. With his AI, he's able to project it several dozen meters away from himself, or only in several critical patches to stop enemy fire without sealing himself off. Thanks to Theta's calculations, he is even able to return fire while otherwise shielding himself, as Theta will open tiny holes in the energy shield to allow North's bullets an exit. When North used his shield to ensconce enemy soldiers, their bullets ricocheted endlessly off the interior of the shield, effectively wiping out themselves.


3. Theta is the AI fragment that North was implanted with. AI units are generally implanted into the human, not the armor suit itself, at the base of the neck. The AI chip remains outside the body, but connects via... some sort of port. This allows Freelancers to remove the AI at their leisure, but North does not like to remove Theta as it scares Theta badly.

Theta is an incomplete part of the Alpha AI. To be more specific, he is Alpha's trust. His personality comes across as childlike, as a result. He is somewhat shy and unsure of himself when he is first implanted in North. It takes him some time to warm up to other Freelancers, and Theta seems to enjoy meeting other AI (something that North broke Project Freelancer rules to let him do).

Theta is capable of running North's equipment better than North ever could, as well as calculating scenarios and various mathematical calculations near instantaneously. It is presumed that, like the other AI fragments, he can also process massive amounts of data analysis in short time periods, hack computers, bypass security routines... basically what you would expect an artificial intelligence to be able to do.

North is able to hear Theta at all times, but Theta can only appear to others when he is near something that will project his image. Freelancer armor includes a holographic projector. It is likely that North and Theta will try to produce a more portable option.

〈 CHARACTER SAMPLES 〉
COMMUNITY POST (VOICE) SAMPLE:

[ A purple armored humanoid is broadcasting from in front of a white wall. That's all that can really be gleaned from the visual of the feed. North has decided that the best way to handle this is to keep as many personal details out of it, so not even his helmet is removed. Anyone who attempts to extrapolate geodata from the feed will find that it is now set to the North Pole. ]

This is Agent North Dakota of... formerly of the UNSC. I think it's a couple hundred years too early for that. Nowadays, I guess you could say I'm from the United States.

I've done some scanning of the Network, and I've found evidence of some of my teammates having been here in the past.

[ Actually, it was Theta who scanned the Network, but North is determined to not immediately mention the little AI. It's worrying that he's found evidence of himself - or someone claiming to be himself - without having any knowledge of the situation.

North has asked Theta to look into it further, comparing the archived videos of that "North" and the others with data compiled from their known counterparts, but it seems to be taking an inordinately long time. Theta feels distracted, anxious. That's never a good sign. ]

If there are any active or retired members of the UNSC, please identify yourselves. There are too many reported instances of imPorts disappearing from this universe to assume that you are still present.

[ It would be nice if South was here and their relationship was its old, playfully competitive self once more, but North would settle for having any of the Freelancers. York would be a solid choice. He'd like to know what Delta would make of this. ]



LOGS POST (PROSE) SAMPLE:

Agent North Dakota was having trouble believing that the past ten seconds happened. A civilian just punched him in the helmet. It's confusing. Despite the colorful opposition to Project Freelancer and the rest of the UNSC, he's never had anyone break their bare hand on his helmet before.

"Careful! You might hurt yourself," he says calmly. There is, somewhere in that statement, a modicum of sarcasm, but it's surrounded by weariness. He has only been in in this bar for two minutes, and North is already cautioning people's against their own tempers.

The potbellied, redfaced man who hit him looked infuriated at this response, but he wasn't drunk enough to lose all sense of judgment and provoke the situation further. As he watched the man whine his way back to his barstool, North was unsurprised to see a small magenta figure blink into existence at the edge of his peripheral.

"We aren't going to stay here, are we?" Theta was facing their attacker as well. He wasn't a threat, but North knew how much Theta liked feeling liked and worried about whether people were nice.

"No, we're here for a day to find out about the city, and then we move on. We talked about it, remember?"

"Right. I still want to go back to Heropa."

North smiled at this. "You want to see another parade in Disneyland."

"There's a way to use them for training! I know there is!" Theta bounced around excitedly. "We can try to contain the confetti."

He can't help thinking about how alarmed that would make the civilians, if clouds of confetti were suspended above them, unable to fall further. They can't cause that kind of panic; it's not right. North can feel Theta's disappointment, but the answering silence confirms that Theta must agree with his interpretation of outcomes.

"I'll tell you what, Theta," North said slowly, as he thought out an appropriate compromise. "When we're done here, we'll go back to that store we saw the other day and pick up some party cannons. That should let you play around with calculating nonlinear paths and slow velocities and confetti."

AIs might be meant as tools, but North always found that placating Theta's whimsy gave him a warm feeling for the rest of the day.

FINAL NOTES:

It's not a power set, but North has had hand-to-hand combat training as part of his training. He also appears to be field-rated as a sniper and for stealth missions.

As for inventory, besides his armor, Agent North will arrive with two sniper rifles. Because one is never enough (he really is wielding two of them at his pullpoint).