Discuss Despedida's hidden past... (Time -1)

You'd managed to learn a lot about each of the Girls by this point. You'd collected info by spying, by interrogation, and even by word of mouth from other agents. However, with how close you'd managed to get to your agent, you wondered if you might be able to hear something new from the horse's mouth. Namaste had told you that you'd need to learn each agent's history if you wanted to really understand the danger you were in. She'd also told you not to trust in other people's testimony... but you really had hope that your fellow agents were people you could trust. You decided to take the risk and attempt to extract some sensitive info straight from the source.

Despedida's eyebrows rose for a moment when you told her that you wanted to know her history before joining CEDIT; in the end, she waved one hand dismissively and put on her laughing face. "Ha ha ha! There's nothing to tell, bro. If you're looking for something juicy, try one of the other Girls. I wasn't even a CEDIT agent before I joined the Goodbye Girls. I was born to be a gamer and work with tech; now I just do both of those things for CEDIT." Her lackidaisical smile still seemed to be hiding something, as her one visible eye gleamed under the bill of her cap.

You told her that wasn't enough. One doesn't go from nothing to being one of the founding members of the Goodbye Girls that way. There had to be something she did that drew someone's attention and got her a place on the team.

Despedida's smile curved, giving her a mischievous expression. "Okay, homeboy, you think you're Francis York Morgan or something over here, sniffing out clues to some weird mystery that may or may not exist? I told you: I've always been a hacker. I was such a good hacker that Goodbye and Vaarvel couldn't pass me up. That enough for you?"

Of course it wasn't... You couldn't imagine Goodbye reaching out to build any sort of team, so she'd probably had no hand in picking its members. That meant that Vaarvel was behind recruiting her... What did that mean? Neither one of them had ever shown any real affinity for one another and furthermore, it was easy to imagine that if Vaarvel really had brought her in, there was something shady behind it.

Changing course, you asked her if she'd always wanted to be an agent.

"No, dude. Told ya. They scouted me. I'm just the S+ pull they were lucky to get from the gacha machine."

It didn't add up... She hadn't done anything to reach out to them? How did she get put on this elite team instead of CEDIT recruiting someone internally? Why was she being so secretive about it, anyway? Could it be...? You couldn't voice this concern, but as a hacker, could she have blackmailed her way in?

The girl's playful smile widened and her eye curved into a crescent shape as she watched you ponder. It could just be your imagination... but you thought that your consternation, trying to figure out this mystery, was giving her some measure of joy to watch. "Dang, I oughta put you on a timer, Ciao. If you overthink like this in a puzzle game, you lose by timeout. But there's no puzzle to figure out here, Professor Layton."

You conceded to her joke, trying to smile and not show how uneasy you felt. The fact that Despedida had remained so guarded, even despite your earnest attempt to extract information and how close you'd seemingly grown to her... Something wasn't right. You held onto that eerie feeling as you left her room and returned to mission control.