Learn about Tschau's role in the murders (Time -1)

The mission you'd been given early on had seemed nearly impossible: investigate the Goodbye Girls and piece together their roles in the murders of your predecessor, those who'd been named Ciao before you. Each of those had died under mysterious circumstances and, due to their involvement with the Goodbye Girls, the suspicion had naturally landed on the mysterious team. You, by some miracle, had stayed alive all this time, using a mix of wit, charm, and boldness; carefulness only came into it now and again, which could be what separated you from the previous handlers, for all you knew.

If, early on, you'd asked the girls directly about their knowledge of those dead handlers, you would have earned, at best, more of their deception or derisive behavior, and, at worst, an early admission into that same file of the deceased. By this point, you'd gotten close to the Girls... not only that, you'd certainly tipped your hand, to some extent, to the fact that you were investigating them. None of them were so stupid that they could have failed to realize that. As such, you felt that the time had come: you'd learn directly what they knew about the handlers that had died and what motivations they might have had for killing them. Even if your search with one of the Girls turned up fruitless, they were certain to know something that would point the finger at one of their comrades.

The short-tempered ninja, Tschau, used to fuss at you or level a blade in your direction every time you interrupted her valuable phone time. You'd learned to curb that kind of reaction by calling her bluff, to some extent: she may act tough, but she was actually sort of the lonely type. She really wanted attention, despite being a master of stealth. By being persistent and frequently visiting her, you'd gotten close enough to the point that the two of you could browse your phones together in her dark room. It might not be healthy for your eyes, but it was also probably the most intimate relationship anyone had established with the ninja since she became one of the Goodbye Girls.

... Or so you thought. You'd yet to learn anything about your predecessors and Tschau had never really talked about them. They were people who'd shared your same position, and yet, they had died in such short order, then been erased from everyone's conversations to the point that none of the Goodbye Girls ever spoke of them, unless you counted the occasional vague warnings. Had they just been terribly unremarkable people, the kind that fade together with the disposable mooks the Goodbye Girls dispatch all the time? It just didn't seem to add up...

As Tschau held her phone out to you to show you some video she wanted to ask your opinion on, you suddenly sprang the question on her, ignoring her video to request that she tell you about your predecessors.

"... I only ever knew two of them. Don't ask me to tell you about someone I don't know," Tschau complained, suddenly drawing her hand back and seeming to decide that the video didn't matter.

What did she know about those two, then?

"... It doesn't matter, does it? They both died. Both were handlers like you... I couldn't tell you a thing about the latest Ciao, because he died so quickly we barely had a chance to meet him. That's what started this whole thing off, right? That's why you were assigned to start investigating. I view it as a blessing. He was not as proficient in this role as you are. Don't let that compliment go to your head... It's just that I think you're better at the field work," Tschau complained, knitting her brow.

You noticed that she still hadn't answered about the second Ciao. Was he different from the third?

"... That Ciao deserved to die. He was a member of the CEDIT Russia team, the one that abducted me and was forced to disband later. I don't mourn him at all. I'm glad he didn't last long in the position, because if someone else hadn't killed him, I would have." Her voice was angry and you noticed she was clutching her valuable phone so hard, she risked cracking it in half with her metal fingers. To you, it didn't look as though the matter with second Ciao was actually a dead one at all; it almost seemed as though Tschau wished he was alive so she could kill him again. You pressed her further, asking how she knew he was a member of the Russian team. "Well, he didn't advertise it. I recognized him... maybe he thought I'd forget, since I was young when I was taken and time had passed, but I didn't. I remembered his face... My memory's very good, Ciao. It was even before I got cybernetic implants, but since then, it's photographic..."

You wanted to learn more about that, but you couldn't afford to drop the topic. It made sense that she was angry at that Ciao when she realized he was a member of CEDIT Russia... But she didn't kill him, right? Someone else did before she got the chance. Could she venture a guess as to who?

"The same damn person who killed all three of them, I'd say. Are you trying to get me to say it's one of the other Goodbye Girls? For all I know, it was some assassin from Adder... I watch for injustice and punish it, but I've never seen any of the other Goodbye Girls kill an ally. You're barking up the wrong tree."

Something about that resonated with you... She watched them, but she'd never seen them kill an ally. Something seemed off... Tschau, who ought to have a vested interest in punishing evil-doers, had never investigated the evil within her own ranks. You pressed her again: she really didn't care?

"Of course I care!" Her eyebrows arched angrily over her pink eyes as she raised her voice. "But I can't catch them! I tried staking it out and watching the other Ciaos, just like I've watched you, but I can't find anything! Especially the second Ciao. I never let him out of my sight... because I was consumed by thoughts of killing him. But I never did. Even the night of his death, I was on him like glue the entire time."

Again, it didn't add up. Tschau was apparently watching this guy around the clock, and yet, he'd been killed right under her nose. Second Ciao had supposedly died in the base... Feeling nervous, you asked her to verify something for you: could she remember what she was doing on the night when the second Ciao was murdered?

"I was watching him, as always."

And you didn't see him murdered?

"I did not see him murdered."

You repeated the questions again and got the same answers. She didn't seem to realize that anything was wrong with her logic, no matter how many times you asked her to repeat herself. Finally, you pointed it out to her plainly: she claimed that she'd been watching him the whole time, yet she also claimed she'd never seen him murdered. One statement or the other was a lie: either she'd stopped watching him at some point, or else, she should have seen him murdered. It couldn't be both.

"... I don't-" Tschau started to protest, clutching one palm to her forehead as though her head had begun to bother her.

It was more or less what you figured. Earlier, Tschau had said she had a perfectly photographic memory, thanks to the cybernetic modifications installed by CEDIT Russia. If she'd been watching, she'd remember. And so she did: she remembered watching. That photographic memory had a weakness though: it's reliant upon the cybernetic part of her brain-- components which can be hacked, in other words. It was not a stretch to imagine that someone had either wiped her memory of that specific event, even though she witnessed it personally.

"My modifications aren't so easy to tamper with, Ciao!" she protested, sounding eager to protest the idea that she could be controlled by enemy forces. "Th-There's no way I'm remembering it wrong!" It wasn't just poor memory... Tschau's thinking had been so thoroughly warped she couldn't understand the contradictions in her own words.

On the contrary: the only people who fully understand them are the Russians, who are crafty enough to have held that ability in secret until it mattered, then deployed it stealthily, thinking no one would ever get close enough to understand. Not just the Russians-- Despedida and Bortnik are both hackers capable of stupendous feats in stupidly short time frames. Those machine components are an exploitable weakness... And, unfortunately, she'd yet to understand the worst possibility. If someone understood that Tschau had been a witness, meaning to stop her from watching as they killed Ciao... what would be the perfect murder weapon? Before you could consider whether you ought to pursue that line of questioning in front of Tschau, the words carelessly slipped from your mouth.

"... You're... Saying I killed him? You're saying I murdered the second Ciao? That I was controlled to kill him by some technological genius?" Tschau asked quietly. When you nodded, she placed one hand upon the hilt of her sword. "Then how about now? Now that you've learned, will I kill you? It would only make sense, right?"

You'd been vaguely aware of that possibility. You reached out one hand to grab her arm and stop her from drawing; when you did, she chopped your arm painfully with the flats of the metallic fingers on the other hand, causing you to recoil in pain.

"See? I'm not killing you. That means I didn't kill him."

Aggravated, you pointed out that this proved nothing. It could be that the hacker only became active at specific, planned times, or some vulnerability was needed. Your interrogation had proven it, though: Tschau had most likely been made an accomplice, or otherwise, directly complicit in the murder of the second Ciao.

"You can't be serious! I-If I can't rely on my own ability to discern targets and choose who I kill and who I spare, then how can I be a punisher of evil?! I'm just somebody's tool!" she complained, now moving both hands to her head and shaking it wildly. {if Tschau Spared Bortnik = 1}"What about Bortnik?! I chose to spare him! Was that even my own choice? Did I choose not to kill him, or did somebody just tell me to choose not to kill him!?"{endif}

You felt sorry for Tschau, but you couldn't answer her questions just yet. You advised that, for now, she should try to keep to herself... No more watching you. No more watching the other Goodbye Girls. She had to avoid putting herself into a position to kill until you got to the bottom of who was behind manipulating her and if they could strike again... Not just that, but whether they'd struck again already.

Tschau surprised you by lurching forward, burying her face in the chest of your coat and wrapping her arms around your chest, while digging her metal fingers into your shoulders. "I can't escape them! I can never get away from CEDIT Russia... They just... They just keep reaching out from every shadow and sticking their hand into my back like a puppet, whenever it's convenient for them! Why?! Why did CEDIT let them do that? The abductions, the experiments... and when they shut them down, they only broke them apart! Russia's science team should have all been killed! I wish they'd all been killed right there! I wish I'd been the one to kill them, everyone in the entire room!"

You were beginning to worry you were going to be the next death, feeling her hands sinking into her flesh with a powerful, mechanically enhanced grip. You placed one hand upon her head and stroked, feeling her hair beneath the hood that hid it.

"Do you know what I felt?! Seeing that man reappear, as part of my team? I wanted to murder him so badly, but I resisted... I resisted... They probably thought I'd pick my own time and murder him, but I resisted! I did all that I could, as a human! And... And they made me do it anyway, to tie up loose ends or... or whatever! The human part of me wouldn't do it, so they made the machine part do it, like they could have all along! I'm no human... I'm a machine!" she wailed, stepping backwards and tearing off her gloves to view her own hands. The pink flesh terminated in gray, metallic prosthetics, which clapped together unsettlingly. "They're just like Milaslava's... I can't...!"

You reached out to approach her again, only for her to place her hands upon her sword while her glistening eyes twitched with frustration.

"Don't! Just leave! If you stay, I'll kill you too! Leeeave!"

You wouldn't take her advice. You approached and placed one hand over her knuckles, then told her: she should consider seeing Despedida. If anyone in the world could help her with the affects of Russia's tampering, it had to be Despedida, who'd proven herself a roboticist even more advanced than Ivan Bortnik.

The ninja closed her crying eyes and sniffled under her mask. "You're right... I'll see Despedida... I'll see if she can help. But Ciao... please, don't talk to me again about this... If you value your own life... Don't talk to me again at all. Don't... Ever approach me again..." she pleaded, as the two of you huddled together in darkness.

You weren't sure if you could keep that promise, not just as a handler for the Goodbye Girls, but also, as someone who'd gotten close to Tschau and seen her pain so clearly. However, this wasn't the end of your consideration for Tschau. Namely... you'd learned that she was most certainly behind second Ciao's death. Now that you had the information... what were you going to do with it? You still needed to find out about the others. You decided that, in the end, you'd have to keep the information in your pocket until the right time to present your full report arrived.

You stayed with Tschau a while longer, despite her protests, until eventually, she calmed enough that you felt comfortable leaving her.

Tschau was haunted by the specter of a corrupted part of CEDIT... a part so corrupt, you couldn't believe that it had once been an arm of the same policing body which you now served. In some ways, they were still a part of that organization; Milaslava remained prominent in Russia, for instance. It wasn't just Russia... even Washington was currently hosting a group of super agents who could, in reality, be war criminals. The deeper you got into CEDIT's secrets, the more you realized the reasons you'd never learned about them as a regular field agent... All of this had been covered up for a reason.