low-level lieutenant for an unknown Italian crime syndicate. During that time, he befriended a former CIA agent known only as "John Doe" and encountered the boy who would later become Pinocchio (see below). Cristiano was directly responsible for a number of critical Padania missions, such as the assassination of Filippo Adani and the shutdown of the Messina Bridge project. In the months before his disappearance, Cristiano was blamed for the many major failures his operations experienced. As a result, a rival faction of Padania betrayed the location of his hideout to the Italian government in exchange for "certain conditions". Cristiano was resigned to his fate until Pinocchio convinced him to attempt escape. During the attempt by Section 2 to arrest Cristiano, he was briefly (and barely) rescued by Franca and Franco in an attempted getaway by car. Moments later, their car crashed and fell into a nearby river after Franca, who was driving the car, was shot several times by Angelica. Cristiano is later shown to be alive, but paralyzed and has to communicate by a computer. He hires Giacomo Dante to wipe out the Social Welfare Agency to avenge Pinocchio's, Franca's and Franco's death. He is finally captured by the Social Welfare Agency after the New Turin incident, and he is convinced to sell out the original perpetrators behind the Croce killings. Franca was the codename of an expert on bombs and explosive materials who worked as a freelancer with her partner Franco (see below). An idealist by nature, Franca had strong morals and disliked those who would kill indiscriminately. As a team, Franca and Franco were known within Padania for the quality of their bombs, which were said to be impossible to disarm. Some within the Five Republics Faction do not trust them because of their freelancer status. They operated an auto repair shop in Milan as a front for their clandestine business. Franca's true identity was Caterina, a student who dropped out of her university in order to file a national lawsuit against the arrest of her father, who was imprisoned on charges of unspecified crimes. Shortly afterward, the father died of suspicious causes during his incarceration. Convinced of her father's innocence and angry at the Italian government's apparent immoral attempts to silence political dissent, Caterina sought out various activists within Italy in an attempt to learn how to get revenge on the Italian government. At the