Bring up the rear with Despedida and find a chance to use the EMP (Discrete EMP -1)

You reasoned out that going with Au Revoir would be bad for both your survival as the latest Ciao and for your ability to carry out your surveillance mission uninterrupted. If you instead stood back with Despedida, you'd have the breathing room to come up with a strategy. "There ya go. Kinda relieved to find out that you're not crazy to jump in bed with that girl and a grenade launcher!" The hacker sounded pleased to find that you weren't going to rise to every taunt Au Revoir threw your way. You felt a certain appreciation for her rationality that was completely at odds with the various schemes you were currently entertaining in your head, trying to devise ways to sabotage your own mission without actually failing it.

"Your loss! I'll have you know, bed-time with me is tres magnifique, an experience to be savored and boasted of! And the grenade launcher only adds to my charm!" With that, the giant Frenchwoman took off, leaving you with Despedida.

As usual, the other girl seemed somewhat aloof to your presence. She was busy readying that drone of hers, seeming as lost in her own world as she did when she played video games. You had suspected she might tell you to watch the master at work or something, but she really was that ignorant or otherwise uncaring of your presence.

Seeing her that dismissive made you feel a little less bad about what you were planning next. With quiet, silent steps{if Stealth Skill = 1} befitting your extensive stealth operative resume{endif}, you made your way over to the girl and readied your discrete EMP. It was the only one you had, so popping it this early in the mission could be a mistake... But on the other hand, nothing was better suited to expose Despedida's weaknesses. You'd have to take full advantage in the precious seconds this EMP could buy you! Brazenly, you reached out and applied the magnetic device on the top-side of Despedida's over-sized headset, then prayed that the lack of signal to the drone wasn't going to cause something to immediately explode.

Thankfully, it seemed you were lucky. The results were actually a little dry: the Mexican agent began cursing and tapping the device with one hand while the drone remained completely still. The goggles must no longer be displaying a VR view of the field, because a few of her hand motions clearly indicated she'd been blinded. For a moment, you were worried she was going to take the goggles off and immediately find the device. Instead, she raised one finger and cleared her throat. "This is kind of like when you try to pick Akuma to show off in front of your friends and pick brown Ryu by accident, isn't it, New Ciao? Or like, you hyped your friends on the Deep Down tech trailer and then they cancel the game? Kind of an embarrassing way to introduce you to my custom-modified CEDIT tech," the girl laughed awkwardly, though you thought you saw a trace of a blush around her cheeks. It really was probably mortifying for her, a tech expert, to have her tech flop the moment she went to deploy it. "I must have fried something when I tried to over-ride the security locks earlier. Luckily, it seems like it's still running on back-up power. I'm going to use the command console to reboot it," she informed you, while tapping on an unseen keyboard with her VR gloves.

You realized that a tech expert like herself would diagnose how to fix the problem, if not its cause, in seconds. It was hard to think of how to take advantage of the precious few moments to learn anything about her! Panicking a bit, you took the best option available to you: you grabbed hold of her persistently baggy pants and pulled them down, all the way past her thighs, then retreated to a safe distance so you could talk to her as a handler who was not a pantsing pervert. Underneath, the agent wore dangerously low-rider panties, red with an elastic band top and an emblem of a mushroom that was too mainstream to misidentify on the front. You didn't know how you felt about seeing a mushroom there, but you could tell by the slight camel-toe that you hadn't uncovered anything special about her gender.

She seemed to catch on that something was amiss. With an all-too-unfortunate speed in her step, she attempted to make a walk towards you, then tripped on her own pants, spilling herself onto the pavement and sticking her pleasantly round, caramel-colored ass into the air as her cap flew off in front of her. "New Ciao! Are we under attack?!" Based on her cries, it seemed that she still hadn't put everything together.

You prayed for her forgiveness, silently, then continued to push your luck. You answered that you were coming to help, picked her cap off the asphalt, then approached her... only to yank down her panties and take a better look. Besides getting a look at her shaven pussy, you came away with a piece of information that could be useful in the future... a tattoo of the phrase "DEFEAT SHENLONG" printed in tramp-stamp range, at the height of her butt-crack. {if Weakness for Video Games = 1}You recognized the phrase from an old Street Fighter joke.{endif}

As you helped her up to her feet and removed the goggles so that she could see, you tried hard not to stare downwards any more and hoped she would ignore the very obvious tent pitched at the front of your otherwise elegant black slacks. You told her that she'd only tripped and fallen on her own clothes when she tried to move wearing that headset. With a "tsk, tsk," you shook your head and suggested she ought to wear something more field appropriate; baggy pants like that were an accident waiting to happen.

"Oh... Oh, dude!" The agent quickly pulled up her pants and failed to notice her ass was out the back of her panties. She fixed her cap back on her head, then tilted it down to hide the redness of her face. "Look, uh... Don't let this be your first impression of me, okay? Like, even Daigo loses on the big stage some times, okay? J-Just... Just look, I got it fixed now, okay? I'm about to do the thing! Please don't tell me I can't wear my cool pants on missions, that's my brand, yo!"

With a sense of urgency, Despdida replaced her goggles, then used her gloves to finish her drone strike. The CEDIT assault drone rocket silently off from position, flying around the abandoned fire station serving as a Deliverer compound, then went in through somewhere in the back. You heard a massive explosion... then a few more massive explosions, probably Au Revoir following up with that grenade launcher. You pitied the enemy agents caught in all that.

"Booyaka! Back in business!" Your ally reached out her hand for a high-five in a completely incorrect direction. You circled around to indulge her.

The inside of the place was in shambles. All of the enemy operatives had been taken down, lying sprawled around the flaming wreck of the base's first floor, dressed in eerie red robes. Those robes had been designed to be flame retardant... but not explosion retardant. Their defeat had been expedient and brutal.

Au Revoir looked as pleased as punch, wearing a huge grin. "Ha ha ha! You slowpokes, I thought for a moment you were leaving it all to me!"

"Ahem... Minor technical issue. The game continues." Despedida didn't seem like she wanted to talk about her brief ENF episode.