"Bye, Blu," Jewel said.

"See ya soon," Blu said back before flying off.

Blu had decided to go back to the jungle to get some extra education in jungle survival from Scarla, just in case there was anything he'd missed. Blu's absence all day had left Jewel feeling somewhat lonely the day before and had the same effect on her today, but at least she had Ashley and Sunny to talk to.

...

Blu just caught Scarla on her way out of her hollow.

"Scarla, wait!" he yelled to catch her attention.

Scarla turned around and saw Blu flying toward her. "Oh, hey, Blu," she greeted. "Back for more lessons?"

Blu panted from the rush to reach her tree before she left. "Y-yeah."

"Good, then you can choose my breakfast. Think of it as a practical test."

"Okay," he agreed nervously. What if he chose a bad fruit?

Blu led her to a papaya tree. "Okay, Blu, so which one do you think is good?"

Blu darted his eyes around to find a papaya that fit the qualities Scarla had told him to look for. There were no suitable papayas on the side they were on, so he flew to the other side for a look.

"Over here!" he called as he found the perfect papaya. It was green with an orange tan to it.

Scarla flew over next to him to examine his finding. "Yep, this one looks good." She proceeded to grab the papaya with her talons and clipped the stem with her beak.

"Come on, let's take this back to my hollow."

They flew back to Scarla's hollow, which wasn't too far from where they were.

"So tell me how things are going between you and Jewel," Scarla said after hastily tearing into the papaya.

"Uh, pretty good I guess." He failed to hide his tone from Scarla.

"You're still not entirely sure about her, huh?"

"Um, well—"

"Geez, I never thought I'd live to see the day I'd give love advice to a male," Scarla mumbled before saying, "Blu, why do you doubt her love?"

"Well, why would she love me? She's a beautiful, freedom-loving bird, and I'm just some domesticated pet. I can't protect her."

Wow, this guy is dense."You know, Blu, for someone with so much intelligence, you're really clueless aren't you? You need to stay with her. Like you told me, you're all she has left."

"So, you're saying she loves me because I'm the only one she can?" Blu asked condescendingly. Those weren't really the best choice of words from Scarla.

"No, Blu. She had nobody before meeting you. You give her hope. You're a sweet, caring bird. She loves you for you!"

Blu moved back in fear as she raised her voice at him, trying to accentuate her point. There was a long silence. Finally, he asked, "Do you really think so?"

"Why don't you just ask her yourself?"

Blu gave it some thought. He could try, but his shyness around Jewel would make it difficult. "I will, but when I think the time is right."

Scarla smiled at him. "Good," she said as she turned toward the hollow entrance. "Now let's go, we have a lesson together."

They flew out of the hollow for Blu's second lesson.

...

The two-hour lesson flew right by without them noticing. Now, Scarla and Blu were walking side by side on the forest floor. Scarla was trying to alleviate Blu's fear of being on the ground, where he was most vulnerable. Blu seemed much more comfortable now. He could easily talk to her without flinching at every snapping twig or looking around every few seconds.

"So, tell me more about Jewel. Is she pretty?" Scarla inquired.

"Oh, you have no idea. She's the most beautiful bird I've ever met." Blu could compliment Jewel easily, so long as she wasn't right next to him.

"But that's not why you love her, right?"

"Oh no, of course not. It's... It's kind of hard to explain. You see—" Blu's eyes widened as they noticed a huge, familiar-looking rock.

As Blu stopped walking, Scarla asked, "What is it Blu?"

Blu threw a wing over her beak. "Shh. We have to get out of here."

"Why?" she asked in a whisper, complying to the implied demand.

"Because I think a friend of mine lives in that hollow," he quickly answered, pointing up at a nearby tree. "And he has seventeen crazy kids."

"Oh come, they can't be that bad."

"Trust me, they are. Now just follow me and we'll be fine." As he said this, he turned around to walk back from where they came. Unfortunately, he didn't notice the stick behind himself. He stepped on it. His heart skipped a beat at the cracking noise at the cracking noise that emanated from beneath his foot. I'm dead.

Ruffling came from the bushes to their left. Blu looked at them apprehensively. Two adorable toucan chicks popped out of them and flew over to Scarla and Blu. Scarla was the first to pick one up.

"Aaaaw. How precious," Scarla said, unknowing of what they were capable of. She was very motherly, kind of like how Jewel was when she met these same two kids.

"And you said these kids were crazy. Come on, Blu. Pick one up."

Blu stared at the chick grabbing his wing and cutely jumping up and down, begging to be held. As crazy as he knew these kids were, he eventually gave in to the cuteness and picked him up. He looked over at Scarla who smirked. "See? They're not so—" At that instant, the chick she was holding tore a few feathers from her chest. She yelped in pain and managed to throw the chick back into the bushes. A second later, the entire army of Rafael's chicks came charging out of the bushes. Half of them went after Scarla while they other went for Blu, who during this time, had just started to run around thrashing about to get the chick off of him. The chicks continued to attack them for about ten seconds before Rafael poked his head out of his head out of his hollow.

"Hey, what's with all the noi—? Blu, is that you?" He jumped out of the hollow. "Okay, kids get off of them, before I call your mother!" With that, the kids immediately darted in seventeen directions to avoid punishment. Rafael walked over to Blu and helped him up. "Yep. That's the secret: Throw the threat in with the command. Amigo, I haven't seen you in forever. Who's this? Where's Jewel?"

Blu helped Scarla up to her feet and said, "Jewel's healing back in the Conservation Center. This is Scarla. She's teaching me how to survive in the jungle. I think I'm actually getting the hang of things." Scarla smiled at this. It was about time Blu admitted that he was more comfortable. Blu continued. "Scarla, this is Rafael. So, Rafael, did that last egg of yours hatch?"

"Oh, it sure did. Follow me." He led them up to his hollow. Rafael remembered and realized that Blu could now fly, so he said, "So Nico and Pedro were right. You can fly. How'd you learn?"

Blu blushed at the memory. "W-Well, I um... Jewel kissed me when I jumped out of that plane we were in."

"I knew it! You have kissed!" Scarla accidentally blurted out. Blu ignored her. He didn't know how to explain his reason for lying to her.

They walked into Rafael's hollow. "Yep, there's my eighteenth little angel *cough* and Eva."

Eva was sleeping soundly with her youngest chick, keeping it warm. If one had not known what a baby was, they'ed think the chick was hideous, but it's small size instantly made it cute.

"So is it a boy or girl?" Blu asked.

"A girl. Turns out I was wrong about the gender."

"What's her name?" Scarla asked.

"Maria."

"That's a beautiful name," she said.

"Yep. Oh, Blu there's something I need to talk to you about. Do you mind waiting here, Scarla?" Rafael requested.

"Sure."

Rafael led Blu out of and around to the base of the tree. After making sure Scarla hadn't followed them, he began. "Okay, so it's about Jewel. Has she showed signs of wanting to mate?"

Blu felt his face heat up."W-W-Well, she's hinted at it once or twice, but she was just joking."

"I think there's more to it than that. You probably don't know this, but Jewel will probably try to mate with you sometime after you're released."

Blu blushed harder. "What? Why?"

"I don't know, it's just a once a year thing, but just know that she'll do everything she can to get what she wants. Now matter what, you need to turn her down."

"O-Okay. That's easy. I don't really want to mate with her anyway."

Rafael's eyes widened in surprise. "Oh really? But still, resist no matter what." Blu nodded.

"But why can't Scarla hear this?" Blu asked.

"Because. She's a female. They tend to stick together on this sort of thing. I would know."

"Right, so just say no, and that's it?"

"Yep."

The duo flew back into the hollow. Apparently, Scarla had been standing there the whole time waiting for them. Eva and Sofia hadn't woken up yet.

"So what did you two talk about?" Scarla asked.

"Nothing, nothing. Just something between us guys." Blu answered. "You ready to go?"

"Sure, I'm getting kinda hungry, anyway," she said, rubbing her stomach.

"Okay, see ya soon, I guess."

"See ya," Rafael said back.

Scarla and Blu took off.

...

Back at the Conservation Center, Blu was greeted by Jewel, who was glad to have him back in her presence. Seeing as how it was only 2:30pm, Blu decided to give Jewel some extra reading lessons and watched a movie with her on Túlio's laptop. The went to sleep together, as usual, peacefully. Jewel noticed Blu smiling in his sleep. It was actually the first time she had seen him do that. Maybe he was dreaming about her. Jewel smiled at the thought. Thank you, Scarla, she thought.

Two more days.

It's a disappointingly short chapter, I know, but the two weeks is really wearing itself thin. I'm running out of ideas (not that I had many in the first place), but I have a convenient solution to the problem. Don't expect an update for a week or two.

WHAT THE HELL? THIRTEEN REVIEWS?

To therobotchicken fan: Yeah, I thought this fic could use an OC, just for the sake of originality. Well Blu was just a baby. His parents did everything for him. He never had to actually make use of his instincts. So Alice and Chloe are both female? I guess the names should have given it away, but Chloe's (I think it's her) voice gave me a tiny shred of hope. That kills my idea completely, but it's not entirely impossible for them to appear. It's just that if I put them in, the idea I have now would be to similar to that of another author. My original idea was to have Alice and Chloe to get together.

To The son of The Scarlet Macaw: Oh, okay. By the way, I got your PM. I was able to read it one day, but I think two days later, I got around to reading your fic. I wanted to give my feedback, but I wasn't allowed to by the website. I went to reply to the message, but I was also not allowed to. Don't know what's going on there...

To therobotchicken fan (again?): Yeah, I did. It was pretty good.

To therobotchicken fan (wtf?): No, I didn't. I just automatically assumed it was spelled that way. I'll go back and fix that.

To C.A.M.z: . Don't expect to see my next fic for some time. Maybe during the holiday. I'll have PLENTY of time to write then. Seriously, you did? I thought that it was worse to be late in the Philipines than in the states.

To WolfOnFyre: (Woops) Glad to hear I made your day. Thanks for the compliments. "Talented": Only when I write for leisure. Thanks. I apologized, because I suggested that your ideas were "out there." I think the context of what I said may have suggested that I thought your ideas are bad. I need to learn to word things more carefully. I like your story "Hanging By a Thread."

To Ghostofinu: Well, I'll get to the sequels after Tennis ends (Just one more day, woohoo!) and once this damn Language Arts project passes over.

To OmarBarria: two words: blatant foreshadowing.

To Lazy Reviewer: I realize that they both have actresses, but that doesn't mean that one could've been male. That's how it works in anime. On the contraire (spelling?), it does. My idea was to get Chloe and Alice together as a sort of subplotish/sidestory/filler thing.

To Corration: Glad to hear that my simplicity doesn't ruin it for you. My mentality (for lack of a better word) is that big words that nobody ever uses distract the reader from the story by making them have to think about the word.

To to Lazy Reviewer (that is not a typo): ...

To therobotchicken fan (PFFT lol): Already on it, minus the mating.

To Lunyk: Thanks, but I wouldn't call this "phenomonal," but if you want to keep giving compliments, go right ahead.

To SmartA55esUnite (even though he didn't comment): You changed you name AGAIN?

Seriously, what the hell? Why can't I get this sort of praise in language arts?