You can ask Watts for some general information, but the only real topic of interest is Ellone. He'll tell you that she left with some Esthar ships, and she was smiling when she left. Hmmm...Very confusing indeed! Oh right, you can win the Angelo card from Watts if you haven't done so yet. If you talk to Zone upstairs, he won't have much to say unless you happen to have The Girl Next Door with you. You can be a nice guy and give it to him for free, or you can sell it to him for 25,500 Gil. If you give it to him for free, he'll give you the Shiva card in exchange, so yeah.
When you head into the captain's quarters, Squall will give him Edea's letter, and he'll recognize her handwriting. He'll explain that they've been raised by her since they were little, and they call her Matron as well. The leader thanks Squall and salutes him, who comments that their salutes are the same. The leader will remark that Edea said the SeeD salute hasn't changed since Garden was established (which makes sense considering Edea learns the salute from Squall in the ending).
Anyway, the leader will then explain what happened to Ellone. They tried to get as far away from Galbadia as they could, but eventually, their navy caught up to them. Unfortunately, their ship also broke down, so they decided to prepare for battle. However, Esthar ships soon arrived and began fighting the Galbadians. In the middle of the battle, some Esthar soldiers came aboard the White SeeD Ship and told them to get aboard their ship. Naturally, they didn't trust Esthar any more than they trusted Galbadia, so they refused. Ellone, however, chased after them. As their ship was pulling away, she yelled out something and then jumped on board. After that, both sides withdrew from the battle, and that was that. The leader says he intends to head to Esthar once the ship is repaired.
When we get back to Garden, Squall tells Nida that he wants to go to Esthar, but apparently, the rough terrain on that continent isn't really suited for the Garden's flight capabilities. The only way to get there is to walk from FH, since the Horizon Bridge connects to Esthar. We land the Garden at FH, and Squall decides he's had enough, and he's gonna take things into his own hands. He picks up Rinoa onto his back and heads off toward Esthar. I guess he thinks he's being sneaky or something, but it's not hard to figure out why they'd be at FH, and they already said they wanted to go to Esthar to find Ellone, so...I dunno why he felt like he had to go off on his own. Or maybe the general thought process was that they had decided to abort the plan to go to Esthar when they heard the Garden couldn't fly there, but again, why go to FH? I'm also not sure why he feels like he can't trust the rest of the party with this, but then again, this is more of a personal thing than "official business" in his mind, I guess, so he doesn't want to feel like he's abusing his authority or something. I dunno. Hard to say.
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