, meaning "Respond, if you would."
Reminds me of a story from my college days, when for some reason or another I wandered into a frat house, drank a little Jack and began dancing with a girl when a few guys wearing polo shirts pull me aside and asked me if I actually knew anyone in the frat. I muttered the name "Brandon." And one of them asked, "Brandon who?" Whatever surname I gave them after that apparently was wrong. They immediately kicked me out of the house, and I left because even with some alcohol running through my system I didn't believe that fighting a small group of drunken frat boys was going to end well.
I guess what I'm trying to say here is that Bear and Pie were lucky that they caught the octopus nose guy (does he have a name?) in the morning instead of at night while under a few cups of jungle juice. And also that they didn't give out their real names.