Little to no fanfare greeted me upon returning to Red Bay late in the night due to mostly everybody being sound asleep.

I welcomed this honestly. I quietly returned to my room in my building, hardly making a stir upon entering my sleepy commune floor and meditated a while before finally going to sleep. It was the best way I knew to end this stressful day.

Things were much different upon sunrise. The first wave of due supplies arrived in Red Bay that foggy morning, rousing immense delight from the residents who were woken up by ruffed-up lorries who were waiting to be let in through the gate. Members of the Limpiadores were driving them; it was uplifting to see them here as a force of renewal and goodwill. They did not share their chief's malice either, as they were quite friendly with the elated denizens of Red Bay. I began to foresee a potential alliance with the Limpiadores while I was watching the supplies come in.

None I believe were happier to wake up to this than Sabrine Grace, who was on the verge of tears as she watched her once dwindling supply now large enough to last several months within an hour, along with the reassurance that more would come in the future. Credit for this renewed bounty inevitably found its way back to me. Given that most of the town had already emerged and gathered around the grassy plaza to watch the lorries come in, thunderous applause came roaring my way once they noticed my reappearance, along with a unanimous desire to lift me over their heads and parade me around like I were their champion―which was only known to me because of how loud their thoughts were.

I was still weary from the prior day, but this moment was a magical one. Although my status in Red Bay had been improving from my contributions, I had mostly been tolerated by much of the populous for reasons I understood, though made it difficult to truly feel like I was welcomed. All of that changed that foggy morning. It brought a smile to my face seeing and hearing everybody now looking upon me with reverence and gratitude. I swore that I would not let their newfound faith in me be squandered.

"Oooh, for she's a jolly old fellow, for she's a jolly old fellow, for she's a jolly old fellooooow…that in the case referring to the specific and current subject matter of nobody can deny!"

That was the merry little tune Doctor Mofuni had been singing aloud in a dramatic bellow as he fixed up some drinks in the other room, though his vocal cohesion had dipped a bit when he garbled that last verbose verse. We all had a jovial little laugh at that before he reemerged with a large dark bottle of human liquor and several small shot glasses with ice in them on a metal tray. It was around noon in Red Bay, and Sabrine, Matthew, and Mofuni himself invited me to their celebratory gathering at the municipal edifice. Even Rob was here partaking in the jubilations.

Having this bottle out was quite a big deal apparently, for it was this particular one that would be brought out for only two occasions: whenever in times of great joy, or when the Combine discovered them and would be on their way to destroy them all. It was easy to understand why they would opt to take a few shots before doom would claim them. We all sat around the coffee table in our varied seating arrangements as Doctor Mofuni poured each of us a generous swig of the hard liquor, sporting a humble sweater vest and a white collared shirt, and curiously, a pair of tight running shorts and green slippers.

While I had always been keen on avoiding the ingestion of anything that would dull my senses, especially when living in the places I had, I indulged in the gift that was offered to me. The strong taste burned my mouth and throat, but it sure made me feel warm inside. It was easy to understand why they would preserve this aged bottle for momentous occasions―both good and bad.

"Do you know what's a nice feeling?" Doctor Mofuni asked all of us as he sat down in the old, ripped leather loveseat, crossing his thin hairy leg over the other with his drink in hand.

"No, Caleb, what?" Sabrine asked, laughing a little as she already downed her first shot.

"Not having a red dot over my head," Mofuni elaborated, he too taking a modest sip of his drink. "Being practically marked for death made it a little hard for me to focus on making the world a better place. As if the Combine wasn't a big enough stressor to constantly look out for―gotta watch my back for honest-to-goodness mole men."

"I hadn't quite considered that before," Sabrine admitted, grabbing the bottle and pouring herself another shot. "Maybe I've been a little hard on you. That couldn't have been a good thing for your mental health. I'm curious to see if this will cause an overall decline in episodes."

"Oh, for sure," Mofuni agreed, finishing his shot before reaching over for the bottle to pour himself another one. "With the supply line restored, I will most certainly have more access to Postum or a suppliant like it. Maybe even actual coffee…" he uttered, almost lustfully. "I can go back to steeping my own medicine again too if shipments have excess ingredients. You people might start seeing a lot less of this me in the days ahead should all work out the way it's looking like."

"I'm looking forward to that," Rob snorted, downing his shot in one gulp. That earned him a silent look from Mofuni that he didn't notice. It looked a little sombre, one of the few moments when his mind was clear enough to recognize the burden his faithful assistant had in often becoming his caretaker on particularly bad occasions. The merry conversation continued before he could dwell on it too long. After the first few shots had gone around, Matthew, being the naturally wary head of security that he was, addressed some valid concerns.

"I wonder how our standing with the Limpiadores will be going forward," he said, reaching for the bottle to refill his empty glass. "That unnamed chief of theirs is a wildcard; I bet he'll do something to disrupt our stability and go back to straining us for you again, doc."

"He won't," I reassured. Again, as I addressed in one of my first entries, it only took a few words to make everybody look at me. Perhaps this was a phenomenon that only occurred during gatherings around tables. I looked at all of them individually while saying, "I delivered what he asked for. We had an agreement with each other that no trouble would arise between our two groups. Simple as that."

I meant to be casual and to lighten any kind of lingering concerns such as the kind Matthew had, yet he seemed uncertain of me―and so did the others to a degree. "Like…that easily? It doesn't seem like him to let go of something he adamantly set his mind to."

"I promise, Matthew; Gus won't be a nuisance to any of you anymore."

The others blinked at me in confusion for a moment. "Who's Gus?" Rob asked forthrightly. I managed to finish my first shot as I crossed my feet, letting his question hang in the air to see if they could answer it. A thoughtful silence befell the group for nearly fifteen seconds before Sabrine's face lit up widely with wonder.

"Hold on. No way. You got him to actually say his name?"

"Not quite like that…" I leered, tapping one of my clawed toes on the old tiled floor. Sabrine then erupted with hearty laughter, nearly spilling her drink. The realisation hit the others a second after that and began to laugh together.

"Oh, Honey, you're killing me!" she bellowed, slapping her knee as she nearly tumbled out of her seat. Either the liquor was incredibly strong, or she had a low tolerance. "The nameless chief of the Limpiadores has a name after all. Never would have guessed in a hundred years that he would actually be that!"

"Betch'a that's the reason he kept it anonymous," Doctor Mofuni snickered a guess before pointing a limp finger at me. "We all better watch out for this one; telepathy's gonna make her the gossip queen of Red Bay soon enough."

The shots appeared to have been having their numbing on all of them as they too laughed along with them. The people around me currently may have already been too drunk to properly grasp what that truly suggested―they all did have quite a few already. Only a few choice Suarians and Star Fox knew about my telepathy up until now because I knew I could entrust my life with them.

I wish that I hadn't mentioned anything to Doctor Mofuni upon my first night here about my ability to read minds; he wouldn't have otherwise had the misfortune of letting the secret out during one of his unhinged moments of cognitive hiccup. I could not be mad at him for that, but it nonetheless brought forth a harrowing reality. Many in Red Bay now accepted the rumour of my telepathy as fact, and I feared that their mistrust in me because of that would cost me dearly in the future in some way. Although they hailed me as a hero with tremendous praise that morning, it was nonetheless a fear that would likely gnaw at the back of my mind so long as I remained harboured by these fine humans.

Much to my relief on the matter, the humans in the room paid no more thought to the potential threat to their privacy that was me and continued conversing merrily. Everyone repeatedly took one shot after another, and Doctor Mofuni felt obligated to confiscate the communal bottle and what remained in it. They only had so few good quality pre-war blends left in their procured collection, so it was important to save and savour every last drop.

I had already consumed a few shots in that time, though the intended effect these drinks were meant to instil might have been having the opposite effect on me. I might have been unwinding a bit too much, in that my mind wandered great distances when it wasn't perpetually kept focused. I kept thinking about my outing in City Three and all that I had witnessed and all the trouble that I had caused―as well as indirectly.

Particularly, I kept recalling the humans that I had helped, or rather, whom I thought I was helping. I could not shake the dreary feeling that my interventions made their situations exponentially much worse. The Combine did not seem to distinguish between dissident and bystander. Guilt by association seemed to be their favoured perverted sense of justice.

I prayed that the couple in the courtyard remained with each other and fled by any means that they could. I did not stick around long enough to see if the rebels I had helped by means of freezing their captors did manage to flee the city in that transport, but I prayed just as much for their safety, especially for poor Shelly. She needed serious treatment for those wounds and I doubted the Combine made it any easier to flee even if their attention was primarily devoted to finding and exterminating me.

And even my own perceived death in the Combine's eyes; now that they no longer considered me a threat, I worried that whatever slim chances any of these humans had in escaping were now certainly diminished with their attention off of me. Regardless of my quest for the pulsar receiver bearing bountiful fruit for many good people, I still regrated going. Slipping into a mindset of guilt by association myself, the events of yesterday seemed to weigh heavier and heavier on me, nearing the point of forcing me to leave so that I may try to meditate in my room and get my sousing head back on straight until Rob had interrupted my troubling thoughts.

"Want me to take that?" he asked me. I lifted my eyes from the floor to see him coming over to me, holding a few other small glasses with ice in them. Understanding the role he had taken up, I smiled and offered my own empty one to him.

"Thank you, Robert. You're very kind," I said, right before he gently took it from my hand.

"Anything for you…"

How he said that made my ear twitch, causing me to look at him curiously. Whether it be from the portions of heavy alcohol or embarrassment, Rob's face was now flushed, and he hurriedly went into the other room, seemingly making a conscious effort to evade any eye contact with me. I hadn't really noticed it until then, but Matthew had also seemed to slip into the other room alongside Mofuni and Rob, leaving just me and Sabrine at the table, who bore witness to the odd exchange between me and Rob.

She gave me a couple of stiff glances before cracking into a wide, disbelieving grin. "Oh my goodness, Robby, Lord have mercy on you!" she cracked up, muffling herself into her hands so Rob wouldn't hear her.

This little sequence of events had essentially confirmed a lingering and long-running suspicion I had been feeling about Rob. Throughout much of this first week, Rob would often shift his behaviour around me to seem cooler in collected, stood up for me whenever perceived mistreatment of me occurred, and would often stare at me for lengthy moments of study when he thought I couldn't sense him watching. He had been displaying telltale signs of attraction towards me, and perhaps the alcohol may have loosened his tongue a lot more than he would have otherwise allowed.

While Sabrine may have found his sprouting crush endearingly pitiful on Rob's part, I felt flattered regardless. A warm feeling in my chest was simmering soundly because of it, or maybe that was due to the shots I took. Either way, I was touched, and it was going to take a little bit before Sabrine would let this one go.

"Honey, call me crazy, but I think he might like you," Sabrine sniggered, trying her best to keep herself from laughing again uproariously.

"I suppose," I agreed with a shrug. "He's a sweet boy; maybe I could indulge him if I'm going to be staying for a long while."

Sabrine could barely hold it together after I let that roll out of my mouth, letting out another round of suffocating laughter that almost made her double over. A blip of sobriety flashed across my mind for a brief moment, which was long enough for me to realise that I may have had a little more to drink than I had initially planned to tolerate. I had decided that maybe it was time to part soon before I would risk saying something that I would definitely regret later, and most certainly put an equally tipsy Rob into an even deeper pit of humiliation than he likely was already in.

And all the same; it was probably a good thing that I head back to my commune soon anyway. I wanted to get a good midday nap in, both so I could sober up a bit and to get some needed rest for what was to come later that night. I was finally going to see the vortigaunts.

I was moments away from standing up to do just that when Doctor Mofuni suddenly popped his head out from the room the others went into, looking at me with a guilty smile. "Oh hey, dearest. Before I forget everything in a few minutes, would you mind if I snipped another sample off of you?" he asked, implying that he needed it out of replacement.

I looked at him and raised an eyebrow. "What happened to the one I gave you?"

"Dunno. Just seemed to up and vanish from where I last put it. I kept it in a rather safe place, too. I'm hoping that I didn't somehow eat during that blackout I had yesterday. My cravings can get kinda wild when I'm running on literal fumes from the machines in my lab."

Sabrine also stared incredulously at our quirky scientist friend, though not necessarily surprised if his theory held up, suggesting that Mofuni truly may have done something like that in the past. Not particularly willing to let him snip another portion of my tail again―a tail that always took good care of―I remembered having an old hairbrush in my room that I had been using to groom my fur and tail. There was plenty of what he was looking for still tangled in it.

"Why don't I just give you what I got on my brush in my room? I think that'll be satisfactory," I insisted, making Mofuni frown.

"Maybe, but not nearly as satisfying, if you catch my meaning?"

I didn't, and I forbade myself from reading his thoughts to find out.