Trailing Oak River: The Investigation Is Afoot!

"Duh dude. The river comes down from the mountains near the city. It goes right through...it..." Manic's eyes widened as he said it. For the first time he saw a point to this whole thing. "...Dude, you don't think...?"

"This sounds weird, but I don't know what I think. I just got a hunch."

'From my dad sitting on my back...' Ridgy added in thought. He looked at the two of them.

Tikal's little reaction to Manic's response was so cute and innocent sounding. She was beginning to depend on him a little. It was a good sign. Ridgy knew the signs well from watching other lovers gather around and pass by, leaving him by himself. There still weren't any sparks between them though. He'd have to do something about that.

"Of course, spending YEARS traversing the woods in search of ancient civilizations can give an opossum a certain intuition when it comes to these things. It's kind-of like being the village tracker." He bragged.

"Maybe that's true, but now that I'm looking around here, it seems the trees are doing fine." Ridgy walked over to a nearby one and gave it a stout clap with his gloved hand. It almost immediately tipped over and fell to the ground with a boom, the shard-filled stump that was left behind practically blackened by all of the rot it was filled with.

"Like, nothing wrong with the tree's around here huh?" Manic deadpanned.

"Look dude, we're not hiking all the way up to the mountains, and I'm totally NOT going to Mercia following you. We should probably get back and tell Rob what we've got now," Manic told Ridgy.

Ridgy tweaked the tip of his pointed nose as he thought about what should they do. "Well, we did promise we'd help Tikal look for food and supplies, and we can't leave her family and that Wolverine fellow behind. We'd better start looking away from the river though. If we do find vegetation here it would be contaminated."

"Tikal!" Ridgy dashed into the river and dove in head first. Then he realized he couldn't swim. His head surfaced and his arms thrashed wildly about. "Manic! Help us!" As they rapidly swept down the river, Ridgy managed to catch up with Tikal, and grabbing her arm, managed to hook onto a nearby rock with his tail. "I am a floating, I am light as a leaf..." He said to himself repeatedly as he clung to the rock, trying to keep the two of them from dipping their heads below the water.

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Ridgy caught the rope and let go of the rock. He and Tikal swung backwards into the river. He had anticipated Manic pulling him back to shore, but given both their weights, and the pulling of the rushing river, the two Freedom Fighters were struggling just to keep one another from sliding any further away. [rand=336537335917662442396830330567546563213540405038647220019532149938]

"Oh man, oh man..." Manic moaned, trying to think of what to do quickly. If he had his board he could just zip out there and garb Tikal...but he didn't have it, and Ridgy couldn't do anything... "oh man..." he said one last time as he broke into a dash, doing his best to try and get ahead of Tikal...before he dove headlong into the river towards her!

Gasping when she managed to bob above the surface, Tikal thrashed and paddled with all of her might toward the green body that had just joined her. While she normally didn't have problems with swimming, the Oak River had hit a particularly unforgiving patch involving rapids and mini-falls. Combined with the chilling water, what seemed to be a simple act was quite the ordeal.

"M-MANIC!!" she cried, coughing out the water that continually assaulted her airway.

Tikal latched hold of the hedgehog, but as she'd gone numb in her outermost extremities, it really came down to elbow strength. The pair tumbled off a couple of short falls, but at last, the rush of the river slowed, and before long the duo had made their way to the rocky bank.

Coughing and dragging herself from the frigid water, Tikal's body shivered violently beneath her drenched cloak. "Ar-r-r-re y-y-you ok-k-k-kay??" she struggled to ask through chattering teeth.

After struggling to release the clasp of her garment (not so easy with numb fingers), Tikal allowed the cloak to flop to the ground with a wet slap. She then made her way to Manic's side and cuddled up against him. "W-We n-n-need to sh-share our body h-h-heat," she explained through her freezing stutter, hugging her shaking body against his own.

It was probably a good half an hour, if not more, before Tikal felt confident enough to get up on her own. As she rose to her knees, however, it occurred to her that perhaps Manic needed some more time. She turned her face skyward; twilight was setting in, and darkness would be on them before long if they didn't get to work on a campsite soon.

Frowning, the priestess leaned over her companion. "Manic? How are you feeling?"

Tikal let out an airy giggle. She'd been hearing a lot about this Rob person as she'd traveled with the green hedgehog. "Well, we need fire, or it's going to be an awfully cold night with a lot of bug bites. I'll do my best to set up camp for us while you recover, okay?"