The soldiers took them onto a military clipper and threw them into separate quarters, despite protests that came perilously close to escalating into something more. The soldiers had taken Taiga away, presumably to put him in the ship's medical facility and possibly to restrain him. It was made very clear that they were prisoners.

Squall was beginning to wish he had accepted Xu's offer for backup--though, he decided, it likely wouldn't have made much of a difference. In the time it took Garden to get a transport down to Lower Centra, they would be long, long gone.

Throwing his pack into the corner of the room--a small one, with few luxuries other than a hammock and a small, functional water room--Squall couldn't dispel the feeling that he should be trying to escape. It was a pointless complaint, he knew--this was, essentially, what they had wanted to happen, just taking place in a manner that wasn't what they had expected. They were going to Esthar Proper to speak with the scientists, they were going there quickly, and the fact that their escort seemed less than inclined to make the trip comfortable for them shouldn't matter a bit.

Even so, they were prisoners--and being treated like prisoners--and so the one thing Squall wanted to do more than anything else at that moment was to break out and get away. It didn't make sense, but there it was.

He sat down, instead.

There was nothing that looked to be even remotely entertaining in the cabin, and he had a feeling that, in his current mood, he wouldn't want to read the one book he had brought along--The Annotated History Of The Early Centran Nation-States. History wasn't a good diversion from imprisonment, especially since the Centran kings were the ones who had come up with over sixteen different words for prison.

His gunblade was in excellent working condition, but that had absolutely no bearing on his decision to take it apart and clean the components. It was something to do, after all--something that would keep him from using a Demi on the door, walking out into the hall, and decapitating people until he was sure he wasn't going to be locked up again.

Things were just beginning to go right on the mission--that was what he kept telling himself. Mostly, it was to rid himself of the impression that things were going so very, very wrong.

-

Fujin was pacing.

there was nothing about this turn of events that she liked--not Lu's solution to things, not the soldiers, not the clipper, not Hadai's way of taking the initiative, and especially not Taiga's recent--whatever it had been. She was hesitant to call it a malfunction, but there wasn't much else she could name it.

If it had been anyone else, the answer wouldn't have been that difficult. He had lunged toward one of the soldiers, and tripped. With his hurt side, it made sense that he would be winded.

Except that cyborgs didn't trip. Cyborgs didn't get winded. The soldier should have been dead and Taiga should have been riddled with bullets from the other five and while she was glad that he wasn't, she wasn't glad that his salvation had come in the manner it did.

She needed to see him, and the soldiers weren't allowing that. And now she was locked in a room, pacing like a caged animal.

There was one thing, and one thing only, that kept her from doing her damnedest to break out and murder the first five soldiers she found. And that was Taiga's well-being--because, much as she didn't trust their captors, she was well aware that whatever they planned on doing placed more value on a Taiga who was alive and somewhat well than a Taiga who wasn't either.

Her cabin had no windows, no clock, and no way to estimate how long they'd been traveling, where they were, or when they would arrive. She had been waiting a lot on this trip, in some vehicle or other, but nothing had been as unbearable as this.

-

Nida flopped into a chair, resigned to a long, long ride full of boredom and suspicion. From his end, at least, it seemed as if the soldiers were as confused by Taiga's company and apparent malfunction as anyone else was, and he could almost pity them.

Almost. As Nida wasn't too interested in developing a psychotic condition, he decided he would take the time to make sure he didn't work up too many sympathetic attitudes toward his captors.

Not expecting any response, Nida tapped out a CQD on the wall with his knuckle. When that elicited no response, he tapped out an SOS. Silence greeted that, too, so he started tapping out the prime numbers. He got halfway through thirteen before a loud thump on the other end suggested that me might have broken something. He stopped pretty quickly.

Slinging his feet up on the hammock, he started counting the rivets on the ceiling. There were quite a few of them--though probably not enough to last him to Esthar.

He sighed. He could always count slower, he reasoned.

-

Seifer was annoyed, his side was aching, and his foot hurt. He was annoyed for the same reasons everyone else on the ship seemed to be annoyed, his side ached because his ribs had still not healed, and his foot hurt because when he had kicked his cabin wall to get rid of the annoying tapping sound coming from it, he had kicked it a bit too hard.

The first few minutes of his incarceration had been taken up with trying to open the door, culminating in a rather painful attempt to ram Hyperion into the door seam. Even if it had looked to be effective, his side was letting him know in no uncertain terms that it wasn't going to stand for another attempt.

Sitting heavily on the hammock--and regretting it instantly as his torso bent in just the right way to put pressure on his ribs--he wondered if there would be any way to contact his posse. There probably wasn't.

He stared at the ceiling. So far, he wasn't enjoying the hospitality of the Esthar military, and was beginning to reconsider the logic of walking directly into the capital city of a nation that he had done significant damage to. If this was an armed escort, he didn't want to see what happened to actual war criminals.

It was an unpleasant thought to begin an unpleasant journey with.

-

Lu crouched on the floor, back to the wall. She wasn't sure whether to feel terrible about the situation or enraged with it, and so she managed it by feeling both in succession. She was going to have words with Hadai, that was for sure--sending soldiers after them? With Taiga's... malfunction... who knew what could have happened?

...then again, Hadai would have had no way of knowing that. She would have no reason to even suspect it would have been this much of a problem.

What had happened to Taiga was anyone's guess--she certainly didn't know. But it worried her, and she couldn't fight a cold feeling of dread.

At least they were going to get back to Esthar in record time.

That might have been a silver lining, but it was certainly a pale one from her point of view.

-

Raijin looked around his room and, seeing no other option readily available, climbed into the hammock and fell asleep.