Overtime with her new friends, Lloyd, Elie and Randy, Tio solved a variety of cases while confronting her traumatizing past against the D∴G Cult. After the incident, she began to open up more than being the team's techno-operator, but more closely to Lloyd, the younger brother of her savior.
Early Days with the SSS
Tio is first introduced as a quiet girl, the youngest member of the SSS, on loan from the Epstein Foundation as part of the Orbal Staff testing program. Despite Lloyd's initial hesitation, she quickly shows maturity beyond her years with her adeptness with combat and technology. Lloyd worries that she’s being forced to work at such a young age when he remembers wanting to do nothing more than play with his friends at her age. But she assures him that she’s working willingly and that she has her own reason to be in Crossbell.
During the SSS’s first case, Tio starts to emerge as a source of knowledge, citing the police database as they work to gather clues. Tio hates being treated like a child, and when the team first meets Chief Roberts, who had been secretly dropping off Orbal Staff upgrades at the Gironde Armory out of fear that he would be bothering her, Tio chastises him, saying she hates the way he dotes over her.
Facing Her Past
When investigating the monster attacks in Armorica Village, before heading back to the city, Tio stops after hearing something faint in the distance, and scans the areas with her sensors. After not detecting it again, she nervously apologizes, saying she was probably just hearing things, but to her surprise, the other SSS members take her seriously and ask about the range of her sensors.
Then, during the investigation of the monster attack at St. Ursula Hospital, the team talks to Martha, the head nurse. She recognizes Tio and comments on how beautiful she’s become since she last saw her. Tio is clearly quite disturbed by the encounter and backs away, saying she’ll come visit Martha later. In the hallway, she admits she was admitted to the hospital 6 years prior. Elie gives her a hug, and the SSS encourages her not to let her past get her down, even though she hasn’t shared any of the details. Tio goes on to surprise the team by using her senses to communicate with Zeit, even becoming able to call on him for help in battle.
During the festival, the team gets a call from Jona, who asks them to investigate the hacker, "Kitty". Tio and Lloyd enter Geofront A Block, and Lloyd rescues her in an unusual moment of aloofness. Inside the terminal room, while waiting for Jona, they start with an awkward conversation, with Lloyd trying to break the ice by commenting on Tio’s Mishy strap on her Enigma unit. But Lloyd is shocked when Tio says that the strap was given to her five years ago by Guy Bannings, Lloyd’s older brother. Tio admits that her birthplace is actually Remiferia and not Leman, and Lloyd remembers his last memory of his brother when Guy said he was heading to “escort this cutie back home.” Tio tells Lloyd a bit more of her story, about Guy rescued her, about how she was hospitalized for six months, about how she returned to Crossbell to find him, but learned Guy had passed away. She concludes her story saying that an Epstein Foundation researcher took interest in her by chance, thinking her sensory abilities would be useful, and recruited her to work the Foundation in Leman as part of the Orbal Staff development team. She spent three years as a researcher in Leman before finally returning to Crossbell.
"Rest easy Tio. I know that you can find happiness. And if you have trouble finding it just give me a call. Together we'll send the source of your sadness packing!"—Guy Bannings
Tio mentions that she’s a little different form normal people - she can hear sounds average people could never hear, she can detect the flow of Orbal energy or elements undetectable by technology, and even peoples' emotions and their heartbeats. She was always alone at Sunday School, and the subject of gossip and teasing. And when her presence made her home more and more tense, she realized it would have been better if she had never come home at all. Lloyd asks that Tio let him keep the promise his brother had made to her, about helping her find happiness. Tio finds this interesting and says that Lloyd reminds her of Guy in the way his spirit shines and how he looks forward with confidence. Yet she also encourages him to remember that he is his own person and not to try to equate himself with Guy. To that end, she asks him to find a new promise to make with her that is his own.
Gnosis
During the Mainz investigation, the team learns of the missing miner Gantz. Tio started looking distant and distraught throughout this investigation, and when asked she brushed it off saying she was tired from the day of investigating. KeA and various townspeople begin commenting that she didn't seem right. When the team makes it to St. Ursula Hospital to consult with Joachim and they show him the blue pills, Tio becomes more and more pale when he says they remind him of the Gnosis drug, and on their way out of the hospital, she passes out.
Tio wakes up shortly after in Cecil's room surrounded by her worried friends. She insists she tell them her whole story, and she tells them that she was snatched away from her parents when she was five years old and held captive by a religious sect. She said she was held as an “offering” as part rituals for worshipping devils and rejecting Aidios. The particular lodge she was held at was performing ceremonies in the form of human experimentation. Sensors were hooked up to their entire bodies and they were pumped full of drugs in an effort to try to enhance their five senses. They even used hypnosis to try to increase her sensitivity to supernatural phenomena. She went on to say that she might have been the luckiest member in her lodge in a sense - the other children started dying around her and when she was the last one left, her sensory abilities had become strong enough for her to hear the cries of the last victim before her die beyond the walls. Finally, Guy rescued her, the only survivor, debilitated beyond recognition.
As we learned before, Guy escorted her back to Remiferia, promising to help her find her happiness one day. But returning to Crossbell she found that Guy had been killed, yet she wasn’t even sad.
"It's as if in exchange for this power, I had my emotions stripped away."
She admitted she wanted to ask Guy, a man so completely full of happiness and optimism, the answer to the question that eats at her every day - “Why am I alive?” Why was she the one to survive? What was she supposed to do with her broken life? She still doesn’t know the answer. This question becomes an ongoing part of Tio's journey of finding herself that carries throughout the series. Elie gives her a big hug, and the SSS encourages her, saying that no one has the answer to that question, that they all have their own pasts to contend with.
That night, KeA insists on sleeping in Tio's room, and the next morning, Lloyd makes Tio promise not to bottle up her feelings anymore, as it could compromise their mission. Tio has a reaction the first time the team catches a glimpse of the Sun Fort. When the team confronts Joachim in the Sun Fort, Tio faces him showing anger and uncharacteristic emotion, blaming him and chastising him for his role in the cult, and the pain she and others had gone through.
From Zero to Azure - Return to Leman
After the SSS solved the cult incident, they returned to Crossbell as heroes. The SSS know that they only succeeded with the help of others and resolve to strengthen themselves. Lloyd receives a personal invitation to train with the First Division, Elie is invited to travel internationally, and Tio struggles with what she ought to do. She finally consults with Chief Roberts, proclaiming that she wants to return to Leman to work more on the Aeon System who reluctantly agrees. Finally, the SSS is temporarily disbanded and Tio returns to the Epstein Foundation headquarters in Leman State.
Return to Crossbell
Tio remains working in Leman as the SSS begins to regroup, communicating with the team via the terminal. The night before the Trade Conference, Tio is en route back to Crossbell when Lloyd and the SSS end up trapped in the terminal control room of Geofront B Block by Campanella, forced to beat him at Pomtto to survive. Before the second round of the game, Tio's voice can be heard as she had hacked into the system from outside the room. She defeats Campanella decisively, saving her friends from a firey death, and reunites with them outside the terminal room. The entire SSS, including Chief Sergei and KeA, are delighted that she had returned and thank her for her excellent work.
During the conference, Tio finds herself feeling dizzy after their discussion with Chancellor Osborne. During the raid on Orchis Tower, Tio puts her Aeon System to good use helping to unblock door locks and elevators as the team chases the intruders to the basement.
Following the conference, the team is invited to Michelam by Mariabell for a vacation. Lloyd is distraught after seeing the slaughter carried out by the Red Constellation beneath the Orchis Tower. On the ferry, Tio consoles him, saying that although she herself is probably more used to death than him, that doesn't mean she's nearly as prepared as him to face the barriers in their path. This brings Lloyd out of his slump, and he pets Tio's head as they decide to enjoy their long-awaited vacation together.
When the team is finally able to relax and enjoy the park, Tio is ecstatic about the chance to catch as many glimpses of Mishy as possible. And when she and Lloyd make a wish in front of the mirror in the Castle of Mirrors, she again wishes that she'll one day find her own meaning for being alive.
Following the train derailment case, the Bracer Guild contacts the SSS, concerned that Lynn and Aeolia (who, incidentally, is a huge fan of Tio and all things cute) have gone missing. Tio, Chief Roberts, and Jona propose using Tio's Aeon System in conjunction with a measurement device to detect the weak signals coming from the bracers' Enigma units. On the rooftop of the Orchis Tower, Tio activates the system in limit break mode and she and Jona are able to pinpoint the location of the missing bracers - the wetlands to the south.
After locating the bracers, the team comes across Campanella, Arianrhod, and F. Novartis, whom Tio recognizes as the author of the Astral Code, used to hack the Orbal Network. Novartis expresses great interest in Tio's past and abilities and attempts to recruit her to join the Society, to which Tio flatly refuses.
After Randy leaves the SSS to take the fight to the Red Constellation in his own hands, the team find him and persuade him to rejoin them. When Randy laments the embarrassing way the team is consoling him, Tio is reminded of her experience after passing out in the hospital, saying that it's a path she had followed once before as well.
After facing Arios in the Mirror Castle, the SSS is captured and Tio is taken to Ursula Hospital and held captive there. After reuniting with Zeit and Wazy and gaining access to the Merkabah, the team approaches the hospital and Zeit detects Tio's presence within. After dispatching the guards at the gate, Tio's voice rings out from within. She runs to Lloyd and hugs him tight, her chest protector slamming into him, in a tearful reunion and a moment of outward emotion we start to see from her more and more.
Tio joins the Merkabah crew working on the bridge. The night before the final battle, Tio receives a letter from her parents. She had left her home in Remiferia as her parents had a difficult time accepting her and her enhanced senses. However, her parents were now worried sick about her, and had come as far as the Crossbell border looking for her after reaching out to the Foundation for information about her. Now that they had come so far together and she had found people who accepted her as she was. Now she finally felt that she was closer to an answer to her question:
"Yes- I am alive. ..How should I live, and for what reason... I felt like I understood the answer to the question I tried asking Guy three years ago. ...And when I read this letter, my real feelings gushed forth like melting ice."
Resistance
Following the Imperial annexation of Crossbell in S.1205, Tio once again returned briefly to the Epstein Foundation's headquarters in Leman. For the sake of her former Special Support Section members, however, she returned to Crossbell.
Although she is under constant surveillance of the Intelligence Division, she fulfills the role of chief researcher and "liaison" for parties involved. She regularly exchanges thoughts with other orbal engineers.
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