Prologue: Assemble the team for Operation First Plague

As a worldwide counter-terrorism agency, responding to some of the most dangerous threats across the globe, CEDIT had always needed a means for the quickest air travel possible... at least until the tech team finished a working model of the prototype teleportation devices they'd been working on. From what you'd heard, those could still be a few decades off, if they ever came. {if Goodbye's Hobby > 999}You wondered if your sci-fi fanatic boss was going to be alive long enough to see the advent of the personal teleportation devices that had always been so popular in television shows and games.{endif} For now, the best that CEDIT could offer its agents were the compact, noiseless, high speed planes known as Gambits. In a picture, they looked a bit like stealth fighters... in practice, they were smaller, but more practical. While teleportation was still beyond CEDIT's greatest scientists, cloaking wasn't; the planes could be briefly hidden from the eye, but were, at all times, hidden from modern radar devices.

Rumors that defectors from CEDIT had been spreading around anti-cloaking devices worried you a bit... but it wasn't as though you were going to storm an enemy stronghold this time. In this instance, all you and your team needed was speedy, discrete transportation across the sea, from America to Egypt; that made the Gambit a safe, effective option. Your mission this time was to infiltrate an auction where Adder would be selling off their newest weapon... Nobody in your organization knew what to expect from that weapon, but if Adder was the one selling it, it had to be the worst type of news.

Adder... you knew them as an underground arms dealers of the worst sort, whose weapons technology at times outpaced CEDIT's own. You didn't need handler level clearance to hear about them; they were so omnipresent they could be thought of as CEDIT's greatest enemies in the world today. Many of the other terrorist cells directly purchased their arms, vehicles, and machinery from this source... rumor had it that a fair number of other enemy operations were bankrolled by this shadowy organization as well. CEDIT had agents crawling all over Adder, and likewise... In this field of work, one always encountered new offers to follow, accumulated new secrets to sell, and so on. These factors, as well as the oft-offered alternative of a messy, immediate death, meant that sleeper agents were constantly flipping between sides.

The possibility of Adder agents in your own ranks made for a worrisome threat. If anyone was likely to be behind the death of your predecessors and the sleeper agent within the Goodbye Girls... it was Adder.

The Gambit you and your team had been assigned for this mission also came with two pilots, CEDIT agents you hadn't had a chance to meet yet. Since they'd, effectively, be parking the plane in the next few hours once you arrived to Egypt... and since your mission was to instead investigate the Goodbye Girls... you figured you should focus on the two in the back of the plane with you.

Prepared for the party, you'd attired yourself in a sharp, black dinner jacket and bow-tie... in practice, it actually looked a whole lot like your original outfit. Nathaniel Speck was the kind of agent who'd grown up with the Bond flicks and it showed in the way he wore a suit everywhere. Varvel was no slouch either, though... the African beauty had dressed to kill with a glamorous white, sequined dress, slit up both legs and fitting close to her slender waist. The outfit showed off her eye-catching hips almost as much as her usual CEDIT spy's catsuit did, but this one also bared her arms, a good portion of the bust-line, and even the majority of her legs, terminating in tall, white high-heels. In the place of her shaven head, a wig of black, braided hair provided an entirely different look. The only part that didn't make sense to you... she still wore her mask. Plus, anyone who'd seen her picture was going to know it was her, right? Even when they were mostly hidden by her mask, her eyes were so striking, like smoldering flames...

Seeming to sense that you were thinking about her, Vaarvel offered an eerie grin from behind the wall of her mask. "What's the matter, Ciao? You seem nervous... Remember: I'm the disguise expert. I know you haven't seen me in action yet, but I'm the pacifist of the Goodbye Girls... the negotiator, you might say. I'm not someone you need to fear." She seemed to have mistaken your look of admiration for you being intimidated... {if Psychology Skill = 1}But you were skilled enough to recognize a taunt when you saw one. It was far too soon to write Vaarvel off as some kind of pacifist...{endif}

Feeling challenged, you nodded, then turned to Tschau. The girl sat fastened in, wearing her full ninja garb, strapped up with various utility belts full of unknowable tools. At this point, she was still a mystery... She rarely spoke... it barely even looked as though she was blinking. For that matter, you didn't even hear breath coming from behind her mask (and with the soundless interior of the Gambit, you'd notice if it was there). Part of you worried that the girl had just died... but another part of you reminded this was just another mystery of the Goodbye Girls you'd have to solve.

You had enough time left, you thought, to start some kind of conversation. Vaarvel sat across from you, smiling, while Tschau stared vacantly at your side. Would it be best to speak across the aisle to Vaarvel, who seemed to want your company, or try to break the ice with the cold, distant Tschau before your first big mission together?