information.

[kickbancaboose]

STATISTICS

CANON Red vs. Blue
TIMELINE Post-Reconstruction

NAME Private Leonard L. Church
DESIGNATION Project Freelancer AI "Alpha"
AGE technically between 3-5, but with the appearance and mentality of a man in his mid/late twenties
HEIGHT 5'9"
WEIGHT 150-155 lbs.
PLAYED BY James McAvoy

PERSONALITY

⦁ Church Support Group 101: raise your hand if you've ever felt personally victimized by Leonard Church?
⦁ asshole
⦁ asshole
⦁ asshole
⦁ asshole
⦁ damaged goods handle with care

INVENTORY

⦁ n/a

Comments

APPLICATION

[kickbancaboose]

OUT OF CHARACTER

Player Name: Chels
Are you 16 or older: Yep!
Contact: turncloak
Current Characters: N/A
Tag: leonard l. church/alpha

IN CHARACTER
Name: Leonard L. Church/Alpha
Canon: Red vs. Blue
Canon Point: 6x19, after he's been nuked by the EMP explosion.
Age: Church is an AI and is between 3-5 years old, but he has the personality, mentality, and physical (in-game) appearance of a man in his mid-to-late twenties.

History:

Here!

I'm also going to provide you with an extremely quick and condensed rundown of Church's history, just so you have some point of reference for the rest of his application.

Many years before the start of the series in S1, Director Leonard Church founds Project Freelancer, a top secret program dedicated to the defeat of the Covenant and thus the end of the Human-Covenant war. The UNSC provide the Director with one AI, the Alpha, for use in his program, and the Director forms the Alpha's personality based on his own memories. Because the Director can't fully realize his vision with only one AI, he finds a way to torture the Alpha until, in order to protect itself, it sheds its memories and emotions into separate pieces (nine of which we see in the series).

The fragmented pieces of the Alpha are then installed into the armor of specially trained soldiers known as Freelancers, and everything is kind of okay and not shitty until some of the fragments cause a few of the Freelancers to go insane (see: Washington, Carolina, and Maine). Eventually, Agent Maine, with the help and influence of the AI Sigma, breaks off from the program and begins systematically killing and/or maiming his fellow Freelancers to collect their AI for himself.

The Alpha, now calling himself Private Leonard Church and with no memory of his existence as an AI, is sent with Agent Florida to a box canyon in a desert far away from Freelancer HQ, where he's to be guarded and protected. The guarding and protecting doesn't go so well, as Church loses his robot body early on in the series and goes on to believe that he's a ghost from S1 all the way to the end of S6 when just before his final and actual death he's reunited with the fragmented AI.

Personality:

"You don't hate a person because someone told you to. You have to learn to despise people on a personal level, not because they're red or because they're blue, but because you know them and you see them every single day, and you can't stand them because they're a complete and total fucking douchebag."

Leonard L. Church. Red vs. Blue: Season 5, Episode 100.

If Church isn't dead or dying, then he's about to be dead through some unfortunate accident that may or may not involve one of his teammates, and that's just the nature of his life. It sucks. A lot.

Some would say that his poor karma is well-deserved. After all, Private Leonard L. Church of Blood Gulch is an insufferable asshole, no frills or tassels. He doesn't give a shit about appearances or playing niceties with people he hates, and if he has a problem with something (and Church often has a problem with everything), then someone somewhere is going to hear about it. There's nothing he doesn't have an opinion on, even if his opinion amounts to nothing more than a flippant I don't care.

More than anything, Church likes to hear himself talk. For how often he complains about other people complaining, he's honestly the reigning king of Supreme Whiny Babies™ and will break down into foul-mouthed, drama queen hysterics at the slightest inconvenience.

He knows that he's a jerk and even comments on that fact several times throughout the series. The problem is that Church is unrepentant; he doesn't care when people find his personality off-putting, nor does he care when people call him out on his unpleasantness. As far as he's concerned, he's earned the right to be as unpleasant as he wants. He's been through enough hell, has been run down and run through and shot one too many times to ever be anything more than a fiercely persistent pessimist.

Church has an extremely poor handle on his emotions and is prone to angry outbursts. He may blame everyone around him for his poor fortune, but the reality is that his temper and ego cause the bulk of his problems. If he were more patient, he might not have inadvertently caused his own "death" in S3, and then the majority of his problems that occur throughout the series might have never happened.

Unfortunately, Church is a glutton for punishment, and he rarely learns from his mistakes. And he makes a lot of mistakes.

But it's not all bad!

Church is the "unofficial" leader of Blue Team, and though he'd never admit to having any sort of fondness for his teammates, he absolutely cares about their well-being and livelihood. When anyone from his team is injured or ill, he often asks after them, and when Caboose is shot in S5, he's visibly distressed over his death. He goes to great lengths to keep them safe, even if he frames his reasons for protecting them as being nothing more than self-preservation.

Then there's Tex, or Allison, his ex-girlfriend — or who he believes to be his ex-girlfriend. Their relationship as it was described in the series was unhealthy and dysfunctional, and as a result, Church is extremely bitter over the way they ended. Despite that bitterness, he expresses genuine concern for her and clearly cares more about her than he's willing to say aloud. That concern turns into an obsession later on in the series, as in S6 he spends the entirety of his time seeking her out while also staunchly refusing to believe that she's dead.

Tex is an incredibly important part of Church's character. She's the only connection he has to his "human" life and is also a symbol of his crippling inability to let go. He can't let her go because letting her go means letting go of his last shred of humanity, and that's not something that Church, that Alpha, ever successfully deals with on his own.

So, no, Church isn't an impenetrable fortress of salt, and yes, he's capable of forming somewhat meaningful relationships, provided that one has the patience to deal with his temper tantrums.

Church is revealed to be the Project Freelancer AI Alpha at the end of S6. Wash gives him this information only shortly before his death, and Church doesn't take the news very well. In fact, he dies while reaffirming his belief that he's a ghost ("When it goes off, I'll be fine. It only affects computers, remember? And I'm a motherfucking ghost.") and never actually comes to term with the revelation that he is indeed a computer. Now that he's been reunited with the fragmented AI, his opinion on ghost vs. AI might change, but Church is the king of denial and it's equally as likely that he'll continue down the same road.

In the end, Church is someone who will do what he has to do without hesitation or apology. If he doesn't do it, then no one else will, and if someone else does, they're probably going to fuck it up. He's lost quite a bit of his bite and motivation since Tex's death at the end of S5, but he still has the ability to put aside all his anger and indifference and bitterness to do something productive, like sacrifice himself for a greater cause.

He's not perfect, but he's not completely shitty, either, so. You know. He has that going for him.

Abilities/Skills:

As an AI, Church is capable of existing without a physical form. He has the ability to jump from host-to-host via radio transmissions and signals, and once attached to a host, he can manipulate their body and take a tiny peek inside their mind. Presumably, he also has the ability to manipulate technology in the same way he manipulates living beings.

Church is a "smart AI" who has been meticulously stripped of the majority of his abilities and functions, so unfortunately his list of abilities is rather short!

Strengths/Weaknesses:

(+) HONEST Or at least where it counts! Church will be the first to admit that he's not brave, not even close, but he does what he has to do because no one else will. He's maybe not always completely right in his honesty, but he's not afraid to give his opinion or let people know how he's feeling.

(+) DETERMINED Even if he's continually fucking up his attempts at playing Big Damn Hero, Church tries really hard. He's not one to easily give up, even when his failings bring about nasty consequences that only complicate his situation more. At his current point in canon, he's lost everything he cares about and yet he still helps Wash set off the EMP despite knowing the blast will likely kill him.

(+) NATURAL LEADER Kind of. Church is the de facto leader of Blue Team, having assumed the role when Blue Team's former leader died of an extreme allergic reaction to aspirin (or when Church accidentally killed him, if we're getting technical). He doesn't necessarily want to be a leader, even if he constantly throws the title around, but he assumes the responsibility because he trusts no one else to get it right.

(+) LOYAL To his team, in particular. He plays a good show of not giving a shit, and to be fair sometimes he genuinely doesn't give a shit, but Church cares a lot about his teammates and their well-being.

(-) GRACELESS Church is uncoordinated and clumsy. Despite always being armed with a weapon, he can't actually aim and has never incapacitated or even hit any of his potential targets, even when they're standing three feet in front of him.

(-) SHORT-TEMPERED See: every single episode from S1-S6. Church is angry, often needlessly, and has absolutely no problem letting every single person he encounters know that he's extremely, dramatically pissed off. At everything. Literally all the time.

(-) ARROGANT "Hey, back off, guys! I've been under a lot of stress. I've been carrying this whole fucking team." Church thinks he's hot shit and fuck you if you think any different.

(-) UNSTABLE Not overtly, no, but Church struggles with processing and conveying any emotion that isn't unbridled rage. He's also recently been through a traumatic experience (i.e. partying up in Agent Maine's head with the fragmented pieces of himself), though that's not likely to come up as a subject unless he's slapped in the face with a reminder.

Items: He ain't got shit. I mean. N/A.

SAMPLES
Network Sample:

[ looks like someone figured out how to use his communicator! good for church, but quite unfortunate for the passengers of the moira. hope you kids like your morning coffee with a generous helping of salt because church is making it rain. ]

golly gee wilikers i never saw this plot twist coming

you know i thought i was finished with this dying and not dying bullshit but if this is how it's going to be for the rest of my infinite undead lives then fine whatever, like i give a shit. i'm not fighting fate and i give up. officially. someone write this down so it's on record. leonard church gives the fuck up, full stop. boom. done.

also before i get an armada of do gooder assholes trying to give me some long, boring spiel about how i'm doomed to live a life of misery with no escape, i want you to hold that thought and consider these three very important points

1 i don't care
2 my life is already miserable
3 i'm actually really hungry so if someone could instead point me in the direction of a cafeteria i'd appreciate it.

okay well thanks

[ if he knew how to do the text equivalent of finger guns, he'd be doing it right now. ]

bye.

Prose/Action Sample:

Church dies (is destroyed), and what happens next is nothing.

There's no blinding light, no teary-eyed farewell party, no tunnel leading to the other side. No chubby cherubs with their bare asses hanging out, no pearly gates forbidding him entrance to a city too bright to see. No memories, no voices, no Allison. No Allison. No Allison. No AllisonAllisonAllison.

And when Church comes back wrong, the nothingness is all he remembers.

As his miserable fucking luck would have it, Wash is the first to find him, nearly two weeks after the EMP was activated at Freelancer Command. Church takes refuge in a derelict, cobweb-ridden base, collapsing onto the grated floor ten feet from the door, and god only knows how Wash finds him, but he does, rolling Church onto his back with the nudge of his foot and staring down at him, hard-faced, when Church draws a gun, shoots, misses, and then passes the fuck out.

Church wakes in a cot hours later, his head pounding, too hot beneath the heavy wool blanket tucked around him. He kicks at the blanket with a grunt, rolling off the side and onto one knee, using the cot's steel frame to push himself to his feet. The room is dark, but there's a dim light seeping from beneath the crack of the door, and Church stumbles toward it, gripping the door handle for support.

And though he knows what to expect when he opens the door, his stomach still lurches when he sees Wash seated on a stool, unarmored with his back to him. Church thinks you fuck and takes a wobbly step forward, reaching out and grasping at empty air.

"You—" Even his voice sounds wrong, too tight and wound with quavering tension, and Church wants to strangle him, wants to hit him, wants him to be someone he's not because of all people he is not supposed to be here and neither is Church.

Instead, he loses his balance and slams hip-first into a table, sending one of Wash's pistols flying.

"Goddamnit."

NOTE The prose sample is pulled from a locked musebox starter. If it's not okay or appropriate, just let me know and I'll happily write something fresh! Also, as Church doesn't have a body in canon, I'd like for him to be given a synthetic human body upon arrival.