It took me about three additional hours to finish what I'd needed to. My conversation with my teammates had taken longer than I'd thought it would, but it'd probably been better for it. There was more of it to come, I was sure, but for now it'd been what was needed.

On the whole though, today had been another addition to the list of 'Days that never seemed to end'. My time in the Sierra Madre still topped the list, alongside others, but this was a definite addition.

By the time I'd slunk back to my conjoined room/broom closet, I was ready to curl into a ball and sleep. But before I could do that, I had to navigate through the mounting personal possessions I'd acquired. The room had been cramped to begin with, given how much floor space my cot took up and how small the room was, but now I'd also raided Tukson's and come away with more books than I should've.

What can I say, I like reading.

After stepping around everything though, I took stripped back to my skivvies and flopped onto my cot. It creaked and whined at the impact, but held. I laid for a moment, ready for sleep to welcome me into its arms.

'-hell, maybe you just want to find someone. Like I said, I want someone found, I find them.'

Sadly though, it appeared that sleep didn't want me back.

I laid awake on my cot for sometime. Despite how drained I was feeling, my brain wasn't ready to shut off yet. I'd spent my whole day doing the things that being trapped at beacon had kept me from doing. Which meant I could avoid confronting things that needed to be. But now I was alone, and the number of things keeping me awake could be counted on one hand.

Rather than stay laying in bed, waiting for something to change, I decided to do something about my situation. Sleep wouldn't come to me, so I would go to it.

It was a tricky business, setting up my hot plate someplace where all of my new garbage wouldn't catch fire. But I managed to stack it in such a way that it wasn't in immediate danger of falling over. I set my kettle on the burner, and poured some water from my canteen into it. It was going to take a few minutes to come to a boil, but I had the other components on hand. While the broc flowers were different, and I had no idea the effect they'd have, they should've work well enough for a cup of dream-time knock-out juice™.

Once the water was to temp, I dropped the components in, capped the kettle, and killed the heat. Then left it to steep.

While it did, I looked to my pip-boy and looked to the 'data' screen.

I jumped to the 'quests' tab and surveyed what was present. The one I was looking for was at the top still, since it was the most recently advanced. But unlike an active quest, its text had become darkened, which signified to me that I'd reached the end of what I could do with it.

Mind Games:

Objective Failed: Walk out of the club.

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Normally, if there was another way to advance, the quest would list something to indicate it. Like, say, tracking down Junior and beating the information out of him. But it wasn't listed, which meant he'd never known anything to begin with, or may well have been lying. Or maybe he could've done as he said. The pip-boy's 'quests' were incredibly vague at times, and only gave real instruction when it deemed fit. I could never count on it for concrete answers, just the occasional sign post that what I'm looking for might be 'this way'.

If that weren't the case, tracking down all of those star bottle caps would've been a hell of a lot easier.

Regardless, I'd made my choice. As far as I was concerned, if I saw junior again, I'd either beat what I wanted to know out of him or kill him outright. He was a dead-end now regardless.

But that left me right back at square one. Dala was nowhere to be found and I was no closer to being home. But it still made no sense to me, where could she have possibly gone? She was a floating brain in a jar. She was smart, sure, but outside of the Big MT they were only dangerous if they could get ahold of the tools needed to keep working. They were also not subtle. Manipulative and Deceptive for sure, but not subtle. Dala may have been the closest among them to it, but even she was still leagues off at times. If she was here, I'd have seen something in the past few months to show it. People missing their brains, Hybrid rattle-snake coyotes, massive blocks of indestructible concrete, something. Instead, aside from the rampant criminal riff-raff, things were quiet.

Where, amongst the dead silence, could Dala hide?

The last time I'd seen her, I'm almost certain I was ripping a hole in the fabric of reality. Where could she have possibly gone…

A thought settled over me.

What if Dala had completed the trip when I hadn't?

I could fully admit that I had no idea how the TPPT works, just that it was good for poking holes in space-time. What if, when we'd been separated, Dala'd been enabled to complete the trip? It would mean she was currently running around in New Vegas. Unsupervised.

That was akin to letting Cook-cook run loose in the Ultra-Luxe. There weren't ass-steaks on the menu yet, but wait a few hours and you could enjoy them alongside deviled kidneys.

I threw up a little in my mouth, that thought went a touch too far.

But if Dala was in the Mojave, I needed to get back ASAP. Especially if she'd landed where I was worried she had. That'd been a bad day. Even if past me knew who she was, which he wouldn't, I'd be in no immediate shape to fight back.

I took a few slow, deep breaths. I needed to be calm. If Dala was in the past, then that also raised the question why I was still alive. If she was there, I should already be dead. The fact that I wasn't didn't bode well.

In search of something to ground me, I scanned the quest list of my Pip-boy again. I just needed to focus on something I had control over. I had control over whether or not these 'quests' got done. It was good enough.

There were actually two other quests active.

Brighter Than The Sun

-Talk with Yang about what happened in the club.

What's New Pussy Cat

-Make things up to Blake.

I took a moment to review the, relatively simple, instructions. Both just required confronting my teammates about tense personal situations. Joy.

I looked away from my pip-boy and checked my kettle. My 'drink' had finished steeping, leaving the water a muddy orange brown. I poured myself a cup, and downed it while it was still piping hot. which really only served to burn my mouth and throat, but I didn't really care at that point.

The drink was enough though. I relaxed into my cot, continuing trains of thought regarding the quests that ran off quietly into the background of my dozing mind. It cleared me enough that as I drifted a single, certain objective came to mind for my much larger problem.

I would keep my ear to the ground regardless, but I needed definitive answers on how close I was to being back in the Mojave.

I needed to talk to Ozpin.