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The Sparrow Scouts are on another field trip.
Today they can earn the Fish Finder River Badge.
For the assignment they need to make teams of four, so Hilda, David and Frida are one person short.
They try to find a fourth person.
No luck, everybody turns them down.
They have quite a bad reputation for always getting into weird adventures. Some even call them the Freaky Friends.
Raven Leader partners them with Louise.
The trip begins.
Hilda and friends plan to have just 1 normal day for once.
But then David loses the map.
And thus end up paddling up a wrong riverway.
Then something grabs hold of Hilda’s oar.
It’s a merman!
Hilda and friends try to hide him from Louise, but the merman is having none of it.
He needs their help.
There’s a vicious sea serpent chasing him.
To escape the beast, they are forced to go to shallower waters with a rapid current. The merman seem to enjoy it for some reason.
It’s a bumpy ride.
That ends with the group going down a waterfall.
Now they’re truly lost, but the merman claims he knows a way back; through a cave behind the waterfall.
Hilda doesn’t trust it. But ultimately, they decide to try their luck with the cave.
In they go, led by the merman, whose name is revealed to be Eugene.
But it’s a trap. Inside the cave is a stage build by Eugene.
He starts a song about his backstory. He used to live in the sea an entertain the king.
But one day a fisherman caught him, believing Eugene to be a wish granting fish.
And after realizeing Eugene could not grand wishes, the fisherman dropped him in the river. Eugene has been lost there since.
Without an audience, he is starving for attention.
So now that he has the kids, he will keep them as an audience forever. Even if they don’t want to.
He gives them a demonstration of his abilities.
Which mainly involves singing, mediocre jokes an a lot of illusions.
Louise figures out Eugene has been tricking them since the beginning. The sea serpent form earlier did not show up in her photograph, ergo it was also an illusion.
David makes a deal. If Eugene cannot make them laugh in the next five minutes, he has to set them free.
Eugene agrees, but at first his jokes have no effect.
So he goes for the big guns and morphs David, Hilda and Frida into more comedic forms.
Even Louise is not safe.
Sadly, this causes the others to laugh and thus loose the bet.
So they have to stay. Only Louise is allowed to go as she didn’t laugh.
However, she asks Eugene to give the others another chance to win their freedom, risking her own in the process if they lose again.
As the next challenge, Eugene warps the entire interior of the cave. The kids have to choose which of the many exits is the real one.
But Louise has a plan; she has observed that Eugene always laughs whenever the kids are about to fall for one of his traps.
So they examine each exit and carefully watch Eugene’s reaction, thus eliminating one fake exit after another.
However, Eugene eventually picks up on their strategy.
Two more exits to try. The kids decide to try the whirlpool first.
And Eugene is not laughing, so it must be the right one.
Or not. A photo reveals Eugene was hiding behind an illusion.
At the last moment the kids escape the whirlpool and paddle for the real exit.
Escaped at last.
Louise reveals she had the map this whole time.
She knew about the reputation of the Freaky Friends, and wanted to see one of their adventures.
The others welcome her as the fourth Freaky Friend.
Eugene accepts his loss, but now he’s without an audience again.
Louise tells him how to get back to the sea. And she has a special request.
The sun is not setting yet, so the kids are ready for more adventure.
Elsewhere, the rude boys from earlier are also still in their boat.
Then a Sea Serpent shows up and scares the living daylights out of them.
Except it was no sea serpent but just Eugene, fulfilling Louise’s request to him before heading back to the sea.