Alright, just so people don't get on me about this, let me take care of some loose ends.
DISCLAIMER: Everything related to Rio is owned by 20th Century Fox and Blue Sky Studios. The only thing I claim as mine is the concept of this story.
The sun rose on yet another gorgeous day in the Amazon. Inside the spix macaw sanctuary, Blu, Jewel and Roberto were asleep inside Roberto's pad. Since another one of the macaws was taking care of the night watch, this allowed Roberto to keep the two lovebirds company, which they appreciated.
Jewel was the first one to wake up, and as she looked over at her mate, she saw that Blu was still fast asleep. The one thing that really surprised her was the look of anguish on Blu's face as he was unable to keep still.
Jewel quickly went into action, grabbing Blu and shaking him as hard as she could.
"Blu? Blu! Wake up!"
Blu awoke with a start, heavily breathing as he looked around the room.
"What? What happened?"
Jewel gave him a warm smile.
"It's nothing, Blu. You were just having a bad dream."
Blu took a few seconds to collect his thoughts. Suddenly, he started to remember snippets of his dream, and his expression darkened.
"Sorry if I worried you, Jewel. I know that I'm trying to be strong while we look for the kids, but I can't help but think of all the bad things that could be happening to them right now."
Jewel shushed him, wrapping her wings around him.
"It's okay to be afraid sometimes, Blu. I'm not going to think any different of you."
Blu gave Jewel a smile of his own before the two of them broke their embrace.
"We should get going. We've gotta meet up with everyone else before we head off."
Jewel nodded, and Blu flew off to where the search team met up last time. But before Jewel could follow, Roberto suddenly woke up.
"Morning, sleepyhead. You woke up just in time. We're going to meet up before we head off today. You coming?" asked Jewel.
"You know it! Come on, let's go, Ju-ju!" said Roberto, ready to prove to Rafael that his mind was in the right place.
Jewel couldn't help but be impressed with Roberto's sudden can-do attitude.
"Wow, you definitely seem ready to go."
Roberto replied with a grin, not wanting to reveal his new outlook on life quite yet. At least, not while the kids were still missing.
Their conversation finished, the two birds flew out of the tree and began making their way to the meeting spot.
Jewel and Roberto finally managed to make it to the meeting spot not too long after everyone else arrived. As Roberto went over to join Rafael, Blu flew out in front of the group.
"Alright, I'll make this short so we can get started. Does everyone remember where they left off in their sections?"
Expecting to see all affirmative answers, Blu was surprised to see a lot of reluctant 'kind of' answers instead. Blu sighed, before amending the orders that he was going to originally say.
"Just try and see if you guys can at least find the general area of where you left off yesterday. I don't really want to waste any time treading ground that we've already went through."
Blu paused to look at the rest of the team.
"So, does anyone have any questions before we go?"
Rafael raised his wing.
"Sorry to ask, but what makes you think that the kids wouldn't head towards areas that we have already covered in our search? It's pretty unlikely that they would be heading in one direction the entire time."
Blu opened his beak to rebut, but he realized that Rafi did have a point.
"You know what? You're right. If you guys feel like it would help, go ahead and search through the areas you already went through. Be quick about it, though. We don't want to lose any more ground."
The rest of the search party nodded in understanding.
"Good. You guys should all remember the guidelines, so let's get started."
The six birds split into their groups, and they all flew off, ready for another day of searching.
As Blu and Jewel began the search inside their section of the forest, they began running into a lot more of the scarlet macaw tribe. Both of them were understandably nervous seeing all of the looks that they were giving the two of them, but thankfully none of them interfered.
"Thank you, Felipe." Blu said to himself once they finally passed all of them and reached a new section of the forest.
As they flew through the forest, calling out each of their kids' names, Blu suddenly realized something. He turned towards Jewel as they landed on a tree branch to rest.
"Hey Jewel, do you really think we should be yelling so loud?"
"What do you mean? We can't exactly rely on just looking for them."
"Well, I do agree that we can't just stop yelling. We just shouldn't be yelling as loud. It might attract predators."
"Oh come on, Blu. When was the last time that you've ever seen any predators here?"
As if to answer Jewel's question, the two birds froze as they heard a low growling sound. They looked down below them and saw a jaguar eyeing them hungrily.
"What do we do?" asked Jewel.
"Don't move. Maybe it might leave us alone."
Unfortunately, Blu's plan backfired almost immediately, as the jaguar began climbing up the tree at a pretty fast pace.
"RUN!" Blu yelled.
Both of the birds took off immediately. As for the jaguar, their sudden escape caught it off guard, and it fell off of the tree, landing on its side. Almost as if the less than graceful fall never happened, the jaguar hopped up on to its feet seconds later and ran after the birds, managing to keep up with the two of them quite easily.
As Blu and Jewel continued to fly through the forest, Blu looked behind him and yelled in fright as he saw the jaguar behind them. Thankfully, Jewel was there with her own plan.
"Get up above the trees! We might be able to lose him if we do!"
Not wanting to waste time arguing, Blu angled himself upwards, successfully managing to squeeze through an opening in the trees. He began hovering, squinting as his eyes adjusted to the bright sun.
Jewel popped up not too far away from where Blu was, and she went over to rejoin her mate.
"You okay?" Blu asked.
"Yeah, I'm fine. That was close."
Jewel took a second to catch her breath before speaking again.
"Let's wait for a bit before we head back down. I don't want to run into that big cat again."
"Me neither. I thought I had it bad with the house cats back in Minnesota." said Blu.
As they landed on a high tree branch to rest, Jewel couldn't help but giggle at Blu's attempt at humor. However, Blu saw through it pretty easily.
"Now Jewel, I know when you're trying to humor me. I know that joke was pretty bad."
Jewel put on a face like she didn't know what Blu was talking about, but relented when she saw the unimpressed look on her mate's face.
"Alright, alright. You do still need some work on your delivery, but you're getting there!"
Although Blu didn't feel like he was as far along as Jewel said, he still smiled at the compliment.
"Thanks for the vote of confidence, Jewel."
She only replied with a light chuckle, as the two lovebirds put their heads together while they waited for the right time to continue their search.
As for Pedro and Nico, the high of possibly finding one of the kids' feathers wore off pretty quickly, as their search through the sections they already went through turned up empty. Still, they weren't dismayed by the lack of any new clues, as that meant they were most likely still heading away from the sanctuary.
Once they reached a new part of their assigned section, they landed on a tree branch nearby to plan out their route.
"So, what do you think? Should we go with the sure thing and do what we did yesterday?" asked Pedro.
"Sounds good. How about we trade places, though? You take top and I take bottom."
"Any reason why?"
"Just to switch things up."
Pedro looked at Nico warily for a second before figuring that there was no harm in trying something different. He shrugged before replying.
"Yeah, sure. Maybe it might work out a little better."
Nico nodded, and the two of them took off, to begin their search through the new area.
Eventually, Pedro and Nico came upon a small clearing. Neither of them saw anything in the area, so they were about to leave the area and move on. However, Nico stopped in his tracks, as he suddenly got an idea.
"Hey, Pedro!" he called out to his friend, who was already on his way out of the clearing.
The red-crested cardinal stopped in his tracks, turning around to face where Nico was still hovering.
"What is it? Shouldn't we keep moving?"
"Come here! I've got an idea!"
Once Pedro rejoined Nico in the clearing, the canary pointed down towards the ground.
"You see the ground down there? It might still be soft after the thunderstorm yesterday, so there might be some tracks."
Instead of commending Nico on his idea, Pedro looked at his friend like he grew another head.
"Are you crazy? Have you forgotten that we're all birds? And that we can fly?"
"Hey, nothing wrong with giving it a shot. Don't you agree?"
Pedro sighed in exasperation.
"I swear, I don't know where your head's at sometimes."
"Pot calling the kettle black, Pedro."
Pedro didn't quite get Nico's idiom, so he just looked at him confused. Rather than try to explain it to him, Nico just rolled his eyes and headed towards the ground, Pedro following close behind.
As Nico walked along the ground, searching for any clues, Pedro followed along, half-heartedly looking himself, mostly because he didn't believe that they would find anything.
However, Pedro's doubts would be proved incorrect, as Nico suddenly called out.
"Hey, I found something!"
Pedro flitted over to where Nico was standing, and his beak fell open as he saw a set of small footprints in the ground.
Pedro looked at Nico in shock, definitely not expecting that the kids would ever travel on the ground.
As for Nico himself, he couldn't resist giving his friend a smug look at being right.
"You know, I don't think I'll ever figure you out." said Pedro, shaking his head.
Nico opened his beak to say something, when the two of them suddenly heard rustling from a bush on the outskirts of the clearing.
"Did you hear that?" whispered Nico as he looked over at his friend.
Pedro nodded.
"I hope it's not anything that's going to eat us!" he said, freaking himself out as he thought about all the predators that would most likely be having them for lunch right about now.
Nico paused before replying.
"I'm gonna go check it out."
"No, don't!"
Pedro frantically tried to grab at Nico and hold him back, but the canary was too fast. Pedro watched nervously as Nico flitted over to the bush and peered through it.
Expecting to see a giant animal bursting out of the bush, Pedro was surprised to hear a gasp coming from Nico.
"Pedro, come quick!"
The red-crested cardinal shot over to the bush and his beak dropped as he saw what was inside.
"Oh my god."