I'll continue with my episode numbering even though I'm way off the pace of the game eliminations now, just so this confessional reads in some sort of sensible order when this thing is all over. Which, incidentally, it might be for me this very round. I still feel very likely safe right now, but there's a decent chance I'm going to have votes at this Tribal Council which is never a good thing.
At present the vote remains on Cheddar, and we should have four votes locked in on that with only Grouch Cop not committing while he looks for alternatives - of which I am apparently his preference. I would rather not have the minority vote on me, but the only alternative may be to claim I'm willing to let Pika go which could come back to bite me if they forward Pika anything I say like that.
Grouch Cop is trying to run the show here, he's going to be able to dictate Cheddar's vote and it looks like his goal is to turn Pikachu and I against each other. Pika being somewhat enamored with Grouch I suspect it was starting to work, but Grouch also got a bit overconfident and said some pretty negative things about Pikachu to me which I was then able to send to Pika. So for now it looks like I've nipped that in the bud and Pika is agreeing with me and Scruff that Grouch is not to be trusted in the long term.
Scruff McGruff is my main alliance. The next layer is Rust/Scruff/Pika and Rust/Scruff/Leon. Leon and Pika are now burying the hatchet after an awkward start and both thinking along the lines of a Rust/Scruff/Leon/Pika alliance. Because of the onion-like nature of this setup I'm confident Scruff and I survive even in a scenario where this phase lasts four rounds and we lose out. If that happened, we'd probably end up sticking with Leon.
If the merge doesn't immediately follow this elimination it would be best for us to go to Tribal Council again so we can eliminate Grouch pre merge.