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Other Characters In-Game: Coran
Character: Alpha
Series: Red vs Blue
Canon Point: 9.02 "The Twins"
CRAU?: Nope!
History: Back before a bunch of reds started fighting a bunch of blues over two flags in a canyon, there was the UNSC. And there was Project Freelancer. In the war against the Covenant, the UNSC (United Nations Space Command) has been developing advanced military AI for years, now. Just as they have been approving various tactical divisions in the desperate hope that one would yield the results they so desperately hoped for. Project Freelancer was one of those divisions.
Initially proposed as a division of fifty specially trained and selected agents who would run special-ops, espionage, and a few more... questionably moral... missions, Project Freelancer was given a singular AI to use - Alpha. However, Director Church had lofty plans for the Freelancers, and those plans would eventually involve more and more AI. During the time Alpha is from, however, those plans are still in their preliminary stages.
The beginning of Alpha's life has been... lonely. He's been kept in the bridge by the Director and the Counselor, being rigorously tested in the time he isn't developing training exercises for the Freelancers or running general navigation for the Mother of Invention. But as much as he was made to be given to the Freelancers, to be used in combat and to keep them safe, the Director hasn't allowed him anything more than fleeting glances of them when they come to the bridge, preferring instead to keep Alpha's presence mostly a secret.
The Freelancers know they are competing to be the one selected to receive the AI, they just haven't met him.
However, seeing as Alpha was made from flash cloning the Director's brain, he also got the Director's baggage. Not too long ago, the obsessive grief the Director carried in regards to his wife's death became too much for Alpha, and to try and maintain peak performance, he cut that part of himself free, allowing it to form another fully functioning AI, Beta. An AI that was given the call sign Texas and integrated into the Freelancers.
Alpha is from shortly after that, just as the Director's obsession for more AI has had him start putting Alpha through more and more stressful tests.
Personality: To understand the Alpha when he was whole, it's necessary to first understand him when he gets broken. The Leonard L. Church that existed during seasons 1-6 of Red vs Blue is not a different character with a different mind, he is the same mind after being put through a virtual meat grinder. There were holes torn in his programming, processes he couldn't easily access, his entire life ripped from his head and shoved into a fragment of himself. But despite all of that, Church and the Alpha are the same mind with the same emotional basis -- Alpha can simply access things that Church no longer could.
Despite being an AI made to help and support soldiers during battle, Alpha is... an asshole. He is undeniably, unquestionably, a huge asshole. He not only enjoys teasing people, he revels in it, will continue to find and press buttons simply because he finds reactions to be funny. This trait also goes hand in hand with another less than desirable one- his ego. See, as the digitized flash-coned mind of a man with a doctorate in AI Theory and Research and other similarly sci-fi degrees, Alpha isn't just smart, he's clever. And he definitely knows it. So, when you combine those two things, you get a guy who's more than a little willing to make a fool out of people both to prove his own intelligence as well as to revel in their reactions. While, in Blood Gulch, this intelligence side of this trait is a little muddled, Church is easily considered one of the show's biggest assholes, proclaiming that he hates everyone and everything and being a raging dick to both friend and foe alike. As far as Alpha is concerned, he didn't even hesitate in talking back to the Director, proudly (and teasingly) proclaiming that he was basically the better version of him.
Another trait that's so irreversibly tied to the character of Leonard L. Church is anger. While in Blood Gulch a large portion of his anger can be tied to how tired and beaten down he's become over the course of his life, anger is by no means a small part of Alpha as a whole. One of his strongest and most worrisome fragments was Omega, the fragment that represented the Alpha's anger. You see, the Director in general is a man prone to answer with anger, although his is more broiling and internal than it is explosive and external. For Alpha, anger is something that shows in frustration and desperation more than anything else. He has the mental and emotional tools to control his anger, but if he's stressed enough, he can easily snap.
Now, while a majority of these traits can be considered purely negative, there is one that waffles between both positive and negative. See, any and all iterations of Leonard Church are, above all else, stubborn. They don't know when to quit, don't know how to be swayed, and are firm in both their beliefs and what they have chosen to do. If you tell a Church they're wrong, they'll dig their heels in and bare their teeth and just go on arguing that the sky is plaid even if they can see it isn't. If you tell a Church to move, they'll sit down where they are, and won't move even if a bomb is coming barreling down at them. And, if you tell a Church that it's time for them to die, the'll give you the double middle finger and somehow manage not to. Alpha is no exception to this general rule of thumb. While he is at the very beginning of the torture the Director subjected him to, the fact that he managed to hold out and fracture himself so many times while still remaining a functioning entity is testament to that. He is one of those people that, when faced with a brick wall and given the option to simply step back and move around it, he won't even climb over it. He'll just break his way through.
One thing that Alpha has that Church doesn't, however, is a sense of ambition. See, of all the fragments that were made throughout the Alpha's torture, the one with the most control and power was Sigma, the fragment of Creativity and Ambition. For him to be that strong, the Alpha would have had a lot of ambition stored up in him. Considering the way the Director charged ahead in his schooling, moving from a private in basic to getting a Doctorate and then going on to head a special-ops experimental program, there's no question of where Alpha got it from. The AI is curious, always wanting to do more for the Mother of Invention, for the Director, for the Freelancers who he's still only "met" through personnel files and training videos.
However, despite all of these other traits, the one that defines Alpha the most is his loyalty. At this point in his life, he hasn't been betrayed, hasn't experienced hardships, and hasn't even had anything negative happen to or around him. As such, he's never had any reason to do anything other than what he was made to do: be completely and totally loyal to the Director, Counselor, and the members of Project Freelancer. He was programmed to assist them and keep them alive, and to him that means never questioning anything they or the Director say. In fact, his loyalty goes beyond a simple matter of following commands. The Alpha is as caring as he is loyal. He honestly cares for and wants the best for the members of Project Freelancer. Enough so that, near the end of his torture, even the mere thought of one of them being injured or dying was enough to fracture his mind. But even then, in the midst of the Director's torture, Alpha's loyalty never wavered. He will always trust the Project, even if it leads him to his death.
Skills/Abilities: In canon, Alpha has a weird ability to "jump". Basically, this means he's an AI with no tether. There's no central chip he's operating from, at least not any more. He's able to bundle up every part of his code and transfer it through who knows what to the nearest technology he can interface with. In the show that's shown mainly with his ability to transfer from suit to suit as well as getting into people from his canon's head through AI ports shoved in their skulls.
Other than that, Alpha's a computer! He's able to work complex number-based problems in his head, can mentally process things at incredible speeds (there's a scene in canon of an AI moving around and working out a combat situation while the world around him is basically in freeze-frame). He's also a military AI, so he has knowledge of military equipment and processes from his universe in the time around 2500AD.
Network Sample: tdm sample!
Third Person Sample:
If there's one thing Alpha hates more than anything else, its the silence that comes with being in his room. There's nothing but data, feeds from the ship, navigational problems that need solving or troubleshooting. The only interaction he has is with himself and even with someone as smart and clever as he is... it gets boring. Before Beta, he used to be on the bridge more, working hand in hand with F.I.L.S.S. to guide the Mother of Invention through the stars as well as make sure the Freelancers had everything they needed. He used to guide their training sessions, develop new challenges, routines, even weapons for them to use and hone their skills with.
He'd even caught a glimpse of Carolina, once. Heard her calling out her father, storming onto the bridge. He'd been up for a full five seconds before the Director dismissed him, before he recalled himself through the network and back to where his chip was housed. This simple, light-lined room deep in the heart of the research center of the Mother of Invention. Waiting for either the Director or the Counselor to come in hours later, to have him run a series of increasingly difficult and ridiculous tests.
Tests like the one he was currently struggling with. A logical fallacy he knows the less complex AI on the Mother would have started shorting out trying to comprehend. A series of mathematical calculations that, while not impossible were keeping so many of his systems busy he was starting to struggle with the final part of his challenge, overseeing a particularly violent training simulation between Agents Texas, Iowa, Carolina, and Kentucky. Already he's found himself forgetting that the tests he's running aren't really happening, but it's hard when so much of him is scattered in different directions. When he hears Iowa yell out in pain, nursing what seems to be a broken arm as Texas lays out some covering fire, as Kentucky takes a bullet to the shoulder, as Carolina starts to get frustrated...
"Pause," he grits out angrily, waving a hand and having that part of the screen freeze. The Director and Counselor won't notice for another fifteen seconds, at least, and the data sink when they review it won't be anything abnormal. He just-- fuck, he needs to think. Needs to focus. He doesn't know why the Director's been running him through so many tests lately, doesn't know why he feels the need to stress his systems more than he already has. He's functioning perfectly, both he and the UNSC have come back with clean scans. So what is Dr. Church looking for?
Frustrated, Alpha turns to the corner of his room, the wall shimmering before turning into a line of numbers, calculations streaming by, and he feels something... new. Something he's been able to keep in check before now. Something that gets stronger and stronger the more stupid and taxing these tests get. He's tired, frustrated-- angry. And its that anger he feels now, anger that has him striking forward, digging his arm into the side of his room and squeezing his fingers around the code, a line of the equation skipping and shit he'll have to do that over again, but the logical fallacy he's been trying to decipher is just-- god he's never going to solve it. It's a fallacy for a goddamn reason and he's so sick of hearing his Freelancers scream, so sick of getting news that they're hurt, out of commission, missing--
Something in the room changes. A spark of energy that isn't his own, a shadow under the code snapping Alpha out of it. He steps back, startled, only to find himself in darkness, a tugging sensation in his chest, disoriented and spinning as he desperately calls his code in as tight as it can be, withdraws into himself and screws his eyes shut and--
"Did it work?" a male voice asks. One that Alpha has never heard before.
"Do you see her computer anywhere? No, dude. Do it again," another chimes in, frustrated and maybe a little out of breath.
"We're out of incense, I can't," the first voice says again, an edge of panic in it now. "You said this would work! She can't read that message, Henry. Holy shit, what am I going to do?!"
Finally, Alpha opens his eyes, and it's-- god, it's something he's never seen before. He's surrounded by numbers, by lines of code and something bright and vibrant he doesn't know what to do with. The language surrounding him is foreign, indecipherable. He can understand the logic of certain sequences, enough to know he's in something, but he can't make heads or tails of anything else. Can't integrate like he normally does. He's a packet of unwelcome, outdated code in a system so much bigger than he's used to.
"Director...?" he calls out softly, unsure, trying to move forward and feeling like he's moving through sludge, like every one of his processes is suddenly overwhelmed, overclocked.
He draws back, grits his teeth, and only notices that the squabbling of the boys outside has stopped when one cautiously asks the other, "What was that?"
It takes about everything that Alpha has, but he manages to turn himself towards the audio input, to focus every one of his systems into identifying and integrating with the video input as well, until a camera clicks on and finds two teenage boys gathered in front of what must be some sort of computer.
"I... dunno. But something definitely talked. You don't think...?" one of them says, looking almost like he's about to pass out.
There's silence for a moment. Silence as the boys stare at the camera, and silence as Alpha tries to decide what he's going to do. Technically, he's not supposed to interact with anyone without the Director's say-so. He has failsafes and emergency protocols built into him to keep those orders. But, he has a few other self-preservation orders as well. Things built into any UNSC made AI. Things meant to allow them their own decisions in times of intense danger or potential risk. And right now, with no Director or Counselor in sight, lost in a system he doesn't understand? Alpha's going to be taking advantage of those. So, he digs his fingers into the system around him, ignores the way it feels like lightning is shooting through him, strands of those weird lights and colors and things that aren't quite binary or any other machine language lancing through him. He withstands it all just to lean into that audio tie and grin.
"Boo."
The kids shriek, practically falling over themselves as they bolt for the door, one yelling "Mom! MOM!!!" as the other screams "WE SUMMONED SOMETHING!"
Alpha, for what it's worth, settles back in the system and just laughs. As much as he trusts what the Director is trying to do, he could do with a bit of a vacation.