A/N: This chapter is still the same as Rehtribution's! I did not make any changes to this chapter. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I do not own Rio or Rehtribution's characters!

Life In Rio

Chapter 2: Meeting New Friends

Rafael frowned at the scarlet macaw's words. It seemed that there was a family of canaries that had landed in Rio and one of them seemed to fit the bill of a "free bird".

"Thanks Mikah. I'll go see if I can find this canary. Pedro might get some competition from this one if he's as good as you say."

Mikah grinned and nodded. "He's amazing. He must have been trained or something."

With a few last parting words the two flew off in different directions, one to the airport and the other towards the beach.

Nico landed on a less populated area of the beach, stretching his wings in the salt spray. It was nice to get away from his nightmare of a brother. Victor had his moments of course, but he was mostly a bully and the one causing most of his injuries. Victor had been the only one to stay with their parents from his clutch and the story was the same for Nico. They were just the lucky birds it seemed.

Ruffling his feathers in the humid temperatures, Nico jumped into the air, soaring above the thousands of umbrellas that humans had put up. He was the only bird left of both clutches that sang. It was kind of annoying, seeing as the humans had made him their favorite because of it.

"Hey pipsqueak!"

Nico sped up a bit, choosing to ignore the insulting remark. Thinking back on the situation, that was probably the worst thing he could have done in his position. It wasn't 10 seconds afterward that he was grabbed by his tail feathers and thrown to the sand. The velocity sent him plummeting too fast for him to correct himself and he ended up with a beak full of sand.

"Aww, I'm sorry. Did that hurt?"

Nico glanced back to see a group of seagulls surrounding him, one of which seemed to be the leader. They were all snickering at him and murmuring to each other.

"We haven't seen you around here before pipsqueak. Are you lost?"

The faked caring was getting to Nico. He wasn't having the best day.

"My name is Nico you crooked beaked scavengers!"

By the shocked looks he got as he stood up, no one really did that to them.

"You're gonna get it pipsqueak."

Somehow, Nico didn't think they meant a free tour.

Pedro couldn't help but sigh in relief when the final bird left the stage. They had a serious hearing problem if they thought screeching unintelligible words at the top of their lungs was singing.

"Pedro! Are you singing tonight?"

Pedro looked at the macaws walking over to him. Schooling his look into one of uncaring calm, he shook his head.

"I'm not in the mood."

The sad looks that he received stroked his ego just a little bit.

"Soon though? We want to hear that new song." A green macaw said, nodding with a hyacinth macaw and a scarlet macaw.

Pedro shrugged and walked off, leaving the three to gossip with some nearby honeycreepers. It was hard when you got a reputation. You had to change how you act in public so that you didn't lose any reputation.

The Branch would take around an hour to set up for the nightly Samba raves so, walking out of the club, Pedro flew up to a nearby roof to sunbathe. The yellow bird earlier really did have the perfect voice but he couldn't just fly up and demand the bird to sing with him. He'd have to get to know the bird, see how he did in front of a crowd of birds. There was a lot of details that he couldn't look over and with the competition coming up, he wasn't sure if he could get everything done in time.

Rafael kept his eyes peeled for a little yellow bird along the shoreline. One of his contacts had reported him flying this way and the beach was a huge place. The number of tourists never seemed to diminish throughout the year and the umbrellas never seemed to leave. Getting into a less populated area of the beach, he frowned at a group of seagulls.

It was weird to see seagulls on the ground, especially so many away from any food. Unless...

Diving down to the group of seagulls, Rafael started yelling.

"What do you guys think you're doing!"

The group looked up at him and were about to go back to whatever they were so enthralled with before they recognized him. The reaction would be something he would have to tell his kids when they were older because seeing a good six full grown seagulls trip over themselves to get away from him was hilarious.

The damage they had done, however, was not.

In the middle of where all the gulls had gathered was a bloody and beaten canary, his eyes clenched tightly against whatever the seagulls had inflicted on him.

Rafael sighed and put a wing over his face. He would have to talk to a couple contacts about this one to "deal" with the seagulls.

Fluttering over to the canary, he lowered his voice to a whisper. "Hey, are you alright?"

Nico barely had a chance. The seagulls had dove at him too quickly for him to escape their circle around him and all he could do was curl up and protect as much of himself as he could.

He was shocked when he heard their feet digging into the sand in an attempt to get away from something. He didn't think that he could handle anything that could scare off six seagulls.

"Hey, are you alright?"

Nico carefully cracked one of his eyes open, flinching when he saw a toucan hovering over him.

"Y-yeah..." Nico murmured, slowly righting himself. He hissed in pain, discovering the cuts and bruises that he hadn't really felt before.

"Come on, we need to get you fixed up. And don't worry, they won't bother you anymore. You are officially a friend of Rafael. And Rafael knows everybody."

Nico couldn't help but chuckle, that made a little more sense. For all those gulls to hightail it away from him because of a toucan seemed a little farfetched. But a toucan with a reputation might do it.

"I'm Nico. I was brought down here from the-"

"United States at about 12 this afternoon. Come on tourist, hop on my back." Rafael turned and lowered his wings for Nico, who was chuckling.

"You really do know everyone." He shook his head. "I can fly myself."

"I'm sure you can, but you'll end up making those cuts worse before we can make them better. Don't worry, I give my kids rides all the time."

Nico sighed and crawled onto Rafael's back, unwilling to draw out the inevitable.

"How many kids do you have?"

Rafael lifted off, careful of Nico and started gliding towards the bird sanctuary. "Two and another on the way. I don't know what number we'll stop at, but I was thinking about five. Any more would be a nightmare."

"Where are we going?"

Rafael hummed for a moment, thinking about his answer. "The sanctuary. There's this crazy human there that treats all kinds of birds for whatever injuries or illnesses they have. He's a real nutcase, trying to learn how to speak our language."

Nico frowned. That didn't sound like a place of healing at all, especially with a crazy calling the shots. But whatever floats your boat really.

Rafael landed in front of a pair of doors with a bird logo on them, lowering his wings so Nico could get off.

"This is the place?" Nico slid off, careful of Rafael's wings.

"Yep. This is it. I'll come get you tonight. Good luck!" With that, Rafael flew off. It wasn't long after that a man with unkempt brown hair walked out. He had glasses on and a white coat. He immediately saw Nico and the yellow bird started backing up a bit.

Tulio sipped at his coffee, smiling at a recovering bird. They had saved quite a few that month and over half were already back in the wild. He frowned when he heard distant squawking. Listening closely, he heard a final loud squawk from a toucan and frowned. That toucan had been doing that for a while, squawking and leaving an injured bird outside his doors. He supposed it was efficient though.

Tulio quickly put down his coffee and ran to the doors, opening them to see a fleeing toucan and a...canary? When the little bird started backing up, he shushed it and scooped his hands under the bird. It was bleeding and looked exhausted.

He hurried inside and set the bird down on a folded up piece of cloth, filling a bowl with water and picking up another rag to wash off the blood.

Pedro hummed the tune for his new song, still unable to come up with the words. He had a few lines, but he couldn't get the rest. The song was going to be called "Hot Wings" though. He glanced up at an incoming object and waved, standing up.

"Hey Raffy! Where you been hiding?"

The toucan landed next to him and stretched, smiling.

"You know, kids, helping canaries, the usual."

"Hold up. Canaries?"

"Yep. Some kid got ganged up on by those seagulls. He's a tourist it looks like."

"He a 'free bird'?"

Rafael nodded and grinned. "He hasn't said anything, but he didn't say anything about his family or his owners more importantly. He gave me his name and said he was from the states, but that's all."

"Is he the one that was singing?" Pedro asked, grinning.

Rafael nodded and the cardinal cheered. "Yes! You've gotta take me to see him!"

Rafael shrugged. "Sure. He'll probably still be a little shaken up though. He got six of them."

"Someone needs to do something about those gulls, they're causing a lot of problems."

"Already done. I sent some branch frequenters after them. Said that they beat up a singer."

"Nicely done Raffy. You up for some french fries? You're never away from Eva and the kids."

The two got up in silent agreement and flew towards their favorite restaurant.

Nico settled down on the soft cloth he was on. He would take this over a peg any day. That Tulio guy was pretty funny. Though, Nico probably shouldn't have messed with him so much. Nico had taught him how to defer dominance. It was all a lie, but the guy seemed happy. And Nico wasn't willing to try to communicate again.

He found himself going in and out of consciousness for the remainder of the evening. Tulio had done a pretty good job with cleaning the cuts and fixing them. There was only one that was kind of deep and it was on his chest.

"Hey, Nico. Pssssst!"

Nico got to his feet and went over to the window where the voice was coming from.

"Hey Rafael!" The window swung open and the toucan went over to him.

"So you're name's Nico?"

Nico looked over at the other voice and frowned. "You're the bird from earlier."

"My name's Pedro. I'm the best singer at the Branch."

Nico frowned. He seemed really cocky, and he wasn't a fan of birds like that.

"The best huh? So what's the Branch?"

Rafael frowned. "The Branch is the most popular bird club in all of Rio. We'll take you there tomorrow."

Nico found himself grinning. "Sounds like a plan."

Rafael offered his back again and Nico got onto him, not missing the concerned look he got from Pedro. Seemed he wasn't completely "holier than thou".

They lifted off and Pedro took to flying behind Rafael. "So what kind of music do you like?"

Nico looked back at him. "Samba of course. There's nothing else like it." Nico found himself smiling. "Ever since I first came to Rio I've been in love with it."

"What would you do if I asked you to sing with me at the Best of the Branch?"

Nico found that Pedro's voice lowered as he asked the question. Was he nervous? "Well, you'd have to ask me first bird." Nico smiled.

Pedro sputtered for a minute before choking out the question. "Will you sing at the Branch with me...please?"

Nico had to suppress the urge to laugh. This bird was a riot. He must not have had many friends. Nico didn't either, but he also wasn't popular. "Of course Pedro, it sounds like fun."

After that, the two had started talking to each other, asking everything from favorite famous birds to favorite color. They found a schedule for when they could meet up to practice, and even started working on the song and choreography.

When they landed in front of the summer house Nico was stuck in, both birds weren't happy to have to part. They had promised to meet up at 10 since Nico's humans would be gone by then. They helped Nico into the house and said their final goodbyes for the night.

Nico flew over to the cage and expertly got inside. His family was sound asleep and he quickly balanced on his peg and fell asleep with them. Tomorrow was going to be a big day after all.