InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Just thinking about it."

First name Agent, last name Washington (freelancerwash) wrote in madisonvalley,
@ 2018-01-27 18:15:00

Entry tags:

!closed, !log, ~2018 january, ~25 points, ~~agent washington (freelancerwash), ~~agent york (freelanceryork)

Who: Washington and York
What: Drinking and catching up
When: Saturday night
Where: Lou's
Warnings: TBD
Status: Closed/On-going

It didn't take much asking around to get directed to a bar called Lou's when Wash and York decided to have some drinks. Wash had at least scoped out the residence they'd given him a key to and stashed his armor and most of his weapons. It didn't appear like many people went visibly armed here and he'd spent enough time in jail after Project Freelancer collapsed.

Jail was still better than what had come after but he wasn't going to think about that right now. Right now he had to try to wrap his head around the fact that York was there. Wash had answered the rescue beacon for York and taken Delta and his healing unit. The same healing unit that was still wired into his armor now. But York was up and running around, which was great, but confusing, and maybe made him a little guilty too.

Wash had seen the lighter Carolina had picked up from the island and knew where it came from. He'd never said anything to her about it because he liked his teeth and he really hated pissed off awkwardness which is pretty much all that would come of trying to talk about it before she was ready. Sarge had asked if her mother was some sort of silver back gorilla on steroids and he wasn't that far off on Tex. And Carolina didn't have much better of a temper!

It didn't matter, the happiness at seeing York there when he walked up to the door to Lou's put a grin on his face and wiped the rest of it out of his mind for right now.

"Seriously, it is great to see you." He was a little too close to hugging York right now. "Let's go get some drinks.'

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freelanceryork
2018-01-28 05:25 pm UTC (link)

York had scoped his own place out and settled in a bit more so he wasn't scaring the locals. Delta hadn't been too happy about that but he figured if someone was going to shoot them, it would've happened already. Still, he kept a few weapons concealed on his person and headed over to Lou's since that seemed to be the place for guys like them. Verdant had been offered up as a suggestion, but the name alone didn't give him quite the same ideas as Lou's did. Lou's was definitely better.

He'd beaten Wash there, so York decided to wait outside for his friend. Wash had always been a lot like a little brother to him so it was good that neither of them were here alone. He was a little worried about the fact that there were four years separating them, especially since York hadn't seen Wash for a couple of years before that. He had an inkling of why that was, knowing what he did about Alison and Wyoming and how that could've gone.

He was more curious about Wash though, than his own future.

"Hey man," York greeted with a grin. "Good to see you, too." He led the way inside and grabbed two seats at the bar, wasting no time in asking for two of whatever the more popular beer was. They'd figure out what they liked the longer they were here but that would be a good place to start.

"First two're on me. You get to provide the entertainment."

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freelancerwash
2018-01-28 05:58 pm UTC (link)

"You want me to be the entertainment? You realize I'm not really all that entertaining right?" Wash figured what York wanted was for Wash to talk about the four years he had on York and maybe about the couple of years they didn't see each other before that but Tex and the others had probably kept really close tabs on anyone still in Freelancer so York might know more about what he'd been doing than Wash did.

He also knew he wasn't going to get out of it because he was terrible for the most part at keeping secrets. There were a couple he'd kept successfully from everyone but those were different.

"Where do you want me to start?"

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freelanceryork
2018-01-29 03:43 am UTC (link)

"Something tells me you'll make do," York replied with a shrug, in part because he figured Wash knew what he was after. The Freelancer program had somehow ended up as the bad guys even though that was never the role he'd wanted to take, so he'd left and tried desperately to take Carolina with them, but she hadn't been able to see beyond her jealousy of Tex. Becoming a thief was just a means of survival for him and since infiltration had been one of his specialties, it just worked out better than most anything else.

The bartended handed over the beers and York took a sip, considering the question. "What happened after I left?" he asked. That seemed like the easiest place to start. "Or you can start with the Sim troopers and Chorus. Whichever." Because that sounded just as interesting and it would probably be part of the story somewhere, to go from Project Freelancer to dealing with Sim troopers.

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freelancerwash
2018-01-29 03:59 am UTC (link)

None of them had wanted to be the bad guys. Some of them, like Wash, had nowhere else to go and that was by design of the Director. Get them out of trouble and give them someplace to go and you can buy loyalty. Wash hadn't known any better at the time.

"After the attempted break in to get Alpha, Freelancers started jumping ship left and right. There were a few of us left doing recovery of equipment and I got sent after the Meta." York would have at least known what had happened to Maine but since Wash had first ran into the Meta after he'd had York as a recovery mission he wouldn't know how bad it had got.

"He had added Omega to Sigma, Eta, Iota and Theta. He was after any others he could find so I was sent to the Reds and Blues originally from Blood Gulch since they'd run into Omega and Gamma before. To say they were idiots would be me being nice but one of them actually turned out to be the Alpha. They'd hidden him in the Sim troopers so no one would find him." He hadn't mentioned Delta. South had him at that point and either way he brought it up it was going to be a dead giveaway.

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freelanceryork
2018-01-29 04:22 am UTC (link)

York listened attentively, slowly sipping his beer as Wash filled him in on what had happened after the Freelancers started leaving the program. It didn't surprise him that the focus would then shift to equipment recovery since the Director didn't particularly like anyone else having his toys.

"Sigma and Maine together wasn't ever going to end well, I don't think," York replied. Sigma was his own kind of terrible. "Delta and I worked out pretty well though, I'd say." It wasn't the most conventional of relationships sure, but it worked for them.

"Hiding the Alpha with the Sims makes sense. No one would ever think to look there. Especially if they're as dumb as you say." It wasn't that hard to imagine, but it was also possible he wasn't imagining the extent of stupidity that Wash had dealt with.

"I take it there's not many left from Project Freelancer, huh?" He took another long pull from his beer. "You end up with Delta then?" York had a feeling his end had hit when he'd gone after Wyoming with Tex.

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freelancerwash
2018-01-29 04:31 am UTC (link)

Unless you met the Reds and Blues it was almost impossible to imagine what they were like. Especially Caboose. Knowing Caboose had the all time record for team kills made him sound more sinister than stupid so meeting him was the only way to get the real picture.

"I was the last one in Freelancer. It's completely disbanded and a few of the other ex agents are out there somewhere. Alaska, Illinois, Arizona." They were ones that weren't as deeply into the program as others. Second tier agents but good people.

"South had Delta for a bit. But since she'd put North in a position to be killed and then shot me in the back and ran off one of the Blues was his temporary host after I paid her back for shooting me and for North." Of course York would figure it out. He knew the odds of his mission against Wyoming. "In the end the Meta grabbed Delta too and we ended up luring him to Freelancer headquarters and activating the EMP. Killed all of the AI and got myself fired. It was a hell of a day."

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freelanceryork
2018-01-29 05:24 am UTC (link)

"Can't imagine the Director was too happy about that," he commented of there being ex agents out there. The Director didn't like when his things were in the hands of others not under his control. South turning on North though. He whistled low. Things had gotten pretty bad from the sound of it.

"Sounds to me like you saved the day, even if it killed all of the AIs." He supposed now was probably a good time to mention the fact that he still had Delta, though. "I've uh. Still got Delta with me." Hopefully knowing all of this wouldn't screw up the timelines or whatever, but what was done was done. If he was going back to die, it probably wouldn't make all that much of a difference.

"How're you holding up?" Wash was like a brother to him so it was important to him that the other Freelancer was doing okay. Maybe being here would be good for the both of them.

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freelancerwash
2018-01-29 11:31 am UTC (link)

"I'm sure the Director was working on some way to either get them back or have them killed but things just kept going downhill for him after we took out headquarters." Wash snorted and took a drink of his beer. "Carolina and Church said he was sitting in the dark watching a video of Allison over and over so they left him there. Apparently he sealed off the location and killed himself."

Honestly Wash was still a little surprised at that. Carolina had been so angry at the Director he'd imagined she'd have not only shot him but maybe made a smiley face out of bullet holes in his head. But she came back out with all that anger gone for the first time in a long time.

"I'm glad you've got Delta. He's good to have around." Delta and Theta were the ones he knew and liked the best aside from Church. And Church was an asshole really, just one he liked after all they'd been through.

"We just got done fighting a war York. We won but we lost people. We lost Church...Epsilon. Carolina took him on as her AI but they acted more like they were brother and sister. You know she's not good at losing people." And he knew he'd have to explain how the hell his old AI figured in the picture but he kind of wanted to know how York was going to react at the subject of Carolina. She and Wash were a team now and it kind of made him feel like he should say he was sorry to York even though the man was dead back home.

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freelanceryork
2018-01-29 07:37 pm UTC (link)

York looked up at the mention of Carolina, unable to keep that one under wraps. He regretted leaving without her, that he hadn't been able to convince her to come with him and Tex. He hadn't ever stopped loving her, but that was a part of him that was gone now. It was good that Carolina survived, that she had Epsilon and Wash looking after her. It would need some explaining, just how Epsilon had come to be Carolina's AI, but Carolina was okay.

"No, no she's not," he replied, turning back to the bar. Their lives had taken very different paths, which wasn't the way he wanted it to turn out. Life didn't ever really go their way, not anymore, so as long as she was still alive, as long as she outlived him and was a part of taking down the Director once and for all, York was okay with that. "Thanks for having her back."

He took a sip of beer and turned back to look at Wash. "How did you get Epsilon back?"

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freelancerwash
2018-01-29 07:51 pm UTC (link)

"Turned out they'd never deleted him. It was less expensive to stick him in a storage device. We took him out before we used the EMP...Alpha was okay with the plan and was the only reason we could keep them all occupied long enough to do what we had to." Wash still got a little bit of a grin at Alpha Church and his insistence he was a ghost and not an AI. They were all god damned weirdos.

But they were his weirdos.

"I guess being around the Reds and Blues was good for Epsilon. They gave him all the memories of Church they had. And he got the memories of the other AI from Carolina." Not from him. He'd never let Epsilon back in his head but there wasn't much he could learn from Wash that he didn't get from all the others. "He remembered about the Director, Allison and everything else. It was weird he was like a whole person, not like one of the fragments even though that's what he was." Maybe because he had all the memories where they were just emotional cores. It was not his specialty.

"Carolina took him on when she was looking for the Director. Figured he might know where the Director was." Wash took another drink of his beer.

"I'll always have her back. We both have a lot of stuff to make up for, can't do that if someone kills us."

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freelanceryork
2018-01-29 09:11 pm UTC (link)

That made some sense, so York wasn't interested in questioning it too much. It had all happened, had all turned out the way it had turned out and there wasn't any changing it. Being mad or jealous of Wash wouldn't get him all that time lost with Carolina so he was just going to settle on being grateful for the time he'd had and for the fact that she made it out the other side okay.

"Probably made it better that way," he replied, of Epsilon. Sooner or later though, everyone would forget and that was the way it should be. The sooner they forgot about Project Freelancer and the Director was gone, let it all die out and let that part of history die away.

He raised his half drunk beer to toast Wash. "Hear's to cleaning out the marks against us," he offered. It was all they could do now, and he was grateful that he and Carolina were the ones who got to make things better for them.

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	freelancerwash 2018-01-30 01:12 am UTC (link)
	Wash raised his glass back. "It'll take a while but we'll do our best to clean out the marks. I promise." They did say they would leave here someday and go right back to where they'd started from so he'd still get to keep working on it. "And in the meantime here's to beer, without impending battle or bloodshed in our near future." (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

freelanceryork
2018-01-30 03:54 am UTC (link)

"I'll find a way to haunt your ass if you don't," he replied, but it was probably an empty threat at this point. So long as they were together, they'd be in better shape and that was the important part. He clinked his beer glass with Wash's and then took a sip.

"You know, you say that, but I have a feeling this place isn't going to be a picnic. I mean, kidnapped against our will? That can't be anything good. There's so many people here. We're going to have our work cut out for us, getting the lay of the land." Information was going to be the key to surviving around here.

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	freelancerwash 2018-01-31 12:55 am UTC (link)
	"Oh I don't expect it to be a cake walk but I'll just say after the people I've been working with it might just feel a little bit like one." Wash sipped his beer before chuckling. "God, especially Caboose. But that will take a few more drinks to tell you about." (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	freelanceryork 2018-02-01 12:02 am UTC (link)
	York chuckled. "Good thing we've got plenty of time and plenty of beer," he replied. The rest of it would come in time; he didn't need it all right now. York trusted that he'd gotten all the key information they were going to need. As long as he and Wash were stuck together, they'd figure it out. For now, they could handle a couple of beers. [ooc: and wrap!] (Reply to this) (Parent)