Keri had been holed up in the workroom aboard the NR-447 for several hours, examining the piece of hull plating she had found on the beach. The ship was off pursuing some lead or other that had left Tavin feeling certain they were going in the wrong direction; and Tavin was currently off explaining that to the mission commander. Considering Tavin's general volatility, the meeting was unlikely to be going well.

"I think this is talking about some kind of propulsion system," Keri said. "The math is a lot more advanced than I was giving it credit for. At least, I think it is; it's kind of hard to tell with only half an equation."

"Why would anyone put math on the outside of their ship?" asked Sean. "I mean, are they trying to educate any fish that might come by?"

"It's probably decorative," said Keri, too distracted to be bothered with his sarcasm. "The Kashkabald had a very strong mathematical tradition in the years before they were conquered by the Sorceress. Math was kind of the holy universal language for them."

"Did the Kashkabald have ships?" Mara asked.

"Nothing that could possibly outrun the Galbadian navy," Keri replied. "And they didn't do a lot of metalwork either. The only thing I can think to compare this to is the kind of markings we see in the MD levels of the Gardens."

Mara's eyebrows shot up. "That's bizarre. You think there's a connection?"

"Sure there is," Sean intoned. "It's clear that the pirates are actually the builders of the Gardens, who have been in hiding for centuries on their highly advanced super-ship; but now the Galbadians have found them, and are after the secrets of their technology."

Keri frowned at him. "...You know, maybe I've been up too long, but that actually kind of makes sense."

"Yeah, I noticed that while I was saying it," agreed Sean. "It's kind of freaky."

Mara stood up from the terminal she had been staring at, stretching. "There is something else going on here, isn't there? I mean, maybe the Galbadians are this secretive about things whenever SeeD is around, but...did you see how many ships they had just at the one beach? Who goes to this much trouble to catch a few pirates?"

"And what kind of pirates find the farthest place from every commerce line in the world to hide out in?" chimed in Sean. "I mean, pirates are supposed to live on the stuff they take, right?"

"There is some traffic to and from Centra," Keri reminded him. "But you're right; most of it steers way clear of these waters. My thing is...I don't know." She held up the fragment of hull. "It's like there's something right in front of me, and I'm totally missing it. It's a really annoying feeling."

"No kidding," said Mara. "You think there's any chance that we'll ever find out what the Galbadians are really up to, or do we just get sent back to Garden when the job is done with a paycheck and some warning, 'Don't discuss any of the things you saw on this mission and don't understand anyway'?"

"Can I say that I totally saw this coming?" said Sean. "This mission completely sucks, okay? The Galbadians are just using us for the work they can't be bothered to do themselves, and we're all like, 'Okay, mister Galbadian guy, please don't cut our funding!' Say I'm whining if you want, but much more of this and I'm moving to Trabia."

"Sean, you're whining," said Keri.

Sean glared at her.

"You know what I don't get," said Mara. "The Galbadians go out of their way to make sure we don't have too much information about these pirates, when they're the ones who hired us to track the pirates down. It's like, these pirates scare them enough that they'll hire SeeD to catch them — which means they've got to be pretty good at escaping the G-Navy, or they'd be caught already — but at the same time, they're kind of blindfolding us as we look for them. How much sense does that make?"

An idea was again nagging at Keri's head, but she was missing some crucial mental link that would allow the idea to make any sense to her. "There's something..." she said. "I don't know what it is, but something about this..."

A moment after she had trailed off, her attempts to reason through her thoughts were interrupted when the doors to their work center slid open and Tavin, wearing his green Paratrooper's uniform, stormed in. "Hyne-damned idiot bastards!" he fumed, throwing down his helmet, hard, onto the desk and cracking one of the display screens. "Every time I ask them what in the lunar hell they want from us, they act like I'm being treasonous or some other stupid thing!" He was so angry that he seemed to have forgotten that he disliked two of the three other people in the room. "You know what they did? They said maybe I was collaborating with the fugitives! 'You guys sure stick together, don't you?' What, like I'm a pirate now?"

Around then, something in Keri's head snapped into place. "...No way," she said out loud. "Tavin, they actually said that? About sticking together?"

"Yeah!" Tavin exclaimed. "Can you believe it? I've been trying to help them catch their stupid pirate fugitives, despite them holing us up in this idiot tiny room and giving us no information, and their way of saying 'Thank you' is to say I'm sympathizing with the pirates?"

Tavin was so furious that he didn't notice the vaguely stunned expression on Keri's face. The other two SeeDs did, however. "What is it, Keri?" asked Mara.

"Uh. I, uh...they..." Keri started talking several seconds before she was able to form a complete sentence.

"Now Tavin was becoming slightly more lucid as well. "Huh? What's got into you, now?"

Keri looked at him, then at the array of papers and monitors detailing their hunt, and finally at the piece of metal she had been examining, with its eerily familiar Kashkabald math.

"...I don't think they hired us to track down pirates," she said.

Quistis' right index finger had been tapping nervously against her left leg for nearly half an hour, although she barely noticed it. She was seated, with Selphie, Irvine and Nida, in the back of a Galbadian all-terrain vehicle that had been rolling across the south Lanker countryside all afternoon. While there were no windows in the back of the vehicle and Quistis hadn't bothered to check her wristwatch recently, she had to imagine that it was at least evening by now.

Everyone was becoming impatient. Quistis was forcing a rigid self-control while working through an intense train of thought; her index finger was the one nervous tick that got away. The others weren't doing as well; Selphie couldn't go more than a minute and a half without shifting her weight or adjusting some piece of her uniform, and Irvine apparently couldn't decide if he should try to sleep or just stare intensely at the wall. Nida was reading the emergency instructions posted by the exit for at least the hundredth time.

The car lurched to a halt without warning as the engine switched into idle. There was the sound of muffled voices outside, and then the back door was swung open by the Galbadian captain who led the troops escorting the SeeDs. "We're here," he declared bluntly, departing before any questions could be asked or thought of. Sighing, Quistis unfastened her seat restraints and climbed out of the vehicle, though her legs were feeling particularly tired.

They were stopped in the middle of the expressway, with yellow warning cones set up on the road to divert traffic around the armored vehicles. Not far ahead was an old brown station wagon stopped along the shoulder with the passenger-side door hanging open. Galbadian troops had surrounded the vehicle, and were closing in cautiously as if there might be a bomb inside.

"Is that the car Squall ran off with?" Quistis asked.

"License plate matches the vehicle stolen last night," replied the Galbadian captain. "Highway patrol first spotted it a few hours ago, with an empty fuel tank and no sign of the occupants."

"When, exactly?" asked Nida, whom Quistis hadn't noticed was listening in. The Galbadian captain apparently hadn't either, and gave him a slightly startled glance before responding.

"They called in the report at 10:04," he said, "but it's not clear how long the vehicle was here before then."

"And it's 16:45 now," said Nida, though Quistis noted that he he didn't need to check his watch to know this. "Even on foot, Squall could have covered a lot of ground already."

"Well, then you'd better not take long working out which way he went," said the captain. "Especially as I want to find them before anything else burns down; hell if we're going to be tracking them down by following the path of scorched earth."

"We're getting into north Lanker now, right?" asked Nida. "It looks like Squall's heading for Timber, maybe to hook up with one of the resistance factions."

"Galbadia's cracking down hard on the Timber resistance," said the captain. "He'd be smart not to show his face within a hundred kilometers of that town; someone'll see him."

"He might not have too many choices," Nida pointed out. "He obviously took Rinoa to that hospital for medical attention, and she might still need some. If you've got a Sorceress who's in bad shape and most of Galbadia after your head, it might work better do disappear in a crowd."

"Hmph." The captain turned to the remains of the hospital. "If his Sorceress is the pyro she's looking to be, I'd want to keep her as far away from people as I could if I were him. Matter of fact, if I were him, I'd be hoping to Hyne that she doesn't put the death toll up any higher." With that, he left to confer with one of his subordinates, leaving Quistis and Nida off to themselves.

"...I was wondering," said Nida. "How helpful are we supposed to be, sharing about where we think Squall is headed?"

Quistis shook her head. "Honestly, I don't know. Do you really think he'll be going to Timber?"

"Not really." Nida shrugged. "That captain's got a good point; if Rinoa did burn down that clinic for some reason, Squall should probably keep her away from other flammable objects until she gets better."

"I suppose," said Quistis. "...Do you think Rinoa really started that fire?"

"Didn't sound like they were making it up," said Nida. "And I don't know the exact statistics on how many hospitals spontaneously burn down, but I get the feeling it's pretty rare. Now doesn't seem like a great time to be trusting to coincidence."

"I know," Quistis agreed. "Still..." Unable to quite formulate what she had been going to say, she shook her head and switched gears. "Anyway. I doubt Squall would want to try visiting another small town after what's happened; and I'm not sure he knows the geography very well. Timber might be his only option."

"Except he doesn't know Timber very well, either," pointed out Nida. He glanced away, looking to have something on his mind; but it took a moment before he said it out loud. "...You know Squall pretty well. Do you think he's really got any kind of plan at all? He could just be trying to get away."

Quistis glanced at him, surprised. Then, frowning, she glanced at the car on the side of the road. "He didn't even bother to refuel. There must have been fuel stations along the road, but he just let the tank run out and abandoned the car."

"The only currency he'd have had was his charge card," Nida pointed out. "The Galbadians could track his whereabouts if he used that."

"They can do that with a car stopped on the roadside, too," said Quistis. "And now he has to proceed on foot, unless he's taken to hitchhiking or..." She trailed off, staring into the woods at nothing in particular.

"Hitchhiking doesn't really seem like something Squall would do," said Nida. "Or that good of an idea anyway. ...Are you okay?"

"Hm?" Quistis refocused on him. "Oh. Yes, I'm fine. It's just..." After trailing off again, she took a moment to wonder how much angst it was really proper for the team leader to share. "...Six people," she said softly, disregarding her conclusion. "I can't stop thinking about them. Burned to death in a hospital; the only thing they did was to get sick at the wrong time."

Nida nodded solemnly. "Well, I guess we don't know that. Maybe they'd grow up to be the next Vinzer Deling or Sorceress Adel. ...The next six Delings and Adels."

Quistis eyed him. "That's an awful thing to say."

He nodded again. "It's a risk I take sometimes."

There was another silence, before Quistis eventually spoke. "When I was twelve, I transferred to Galbadia Garden for two years, before I came back to take the SeeD exam. I did it because whenever Squall and Seifer would get into fights — and it happened a lot — I would feel like I had to step in and resolve things." She half-smiled. "Sometimes, trying to keep them apart from each other left me pretty beat up myself. It got so bad that I was falling behind in my studies right along with them.

"When I came back to Balamb Garden, I was actually stunned by how well the two of them were getting along. They still fought, of course, but when I'd left, they'd been screaming so loud that I swore the whole Garden could hear them. Once I asked Squall why he and Seifer still fought with each other, even though they almost seemed like friends. Squall said, 'I've gotta take care of myself.' And that's never changed, ever since he was a kid back at the orphanage; even if he has no idea what action to take, the one thing Squall can't stand to do is nothing." She sighed. "I wish I'd remembered that sooner."

Nida nodded solemnly, with one of the expressions that Quistis had taken to mean the at he was in the middle of deep thinking, though she knew not about what. "...So where do we go from here?" he asked.

Quistis shook her head, looking everywhere else and then at him. "Beats me. I don't have a clue what Squall's doing, Nida; I don't think he has a clue. He's just doing, because he's been standing still for much too long."

Nida took this in while maintaining a perfectly still pose, of the sort that likely contributed to how frequently he was overlooked. "...So what do we do?"

Quistis glanced up along the road, taking a moment to note the irony. She had no idea what Squall was doing, and thus couldn't begin to guess where to look for him. But with the Galbadians impatient to catch him and distrustful of her goals, she had to take some action to find him. The one thing she couldn't do was nothing.

"Let's go to Timber," she said.