[Ketcham household. A larine deliveryavian carries a parcel to the front door and rings the bell. After a few seconds of waiting, Ellen opens the door]
[larine deliveryavian]: “Delivery for Ellen Ketcham.”
Ellen: “That’d be me.” [takes the parcel] “Thank you, sir.”
[larine deliveryavian]: “Thank you for choosing CDS, the Ciconiiform Delivery Service.”
Ellen: [beat] “…you’re a larine. And I know because you look like an ine version of my cousin’s pet seagull.”
[larine deliveryavian]: “I’ll let you in on something, kid.” [the deliveryavian continues as Ellen notices toothpick-wide holes at the top of the box] “The ciconiiform thing is just because the company was founded by ciconiiformes. Avians of all kinds deliver for CDS. If they only hired ciconiiformes… well, there wouldn’t be a CDS.”
Ellen: [nods] “Makes sense.”
[larine deliveryavian]: “Yep. Have a nice day.”
[The deliveryavian flies off as Ellen goes back inside. Upon closing the door, she whistles. One short one, beat. Short, long, short, short, beat. Short, long, short, short, beat. Short, beat. Long, short, beat. The footsteps of the other quints can be heard from further in the house]
Zack: “Ellen is calling a meeting!”
[a few seconds later, the other quints have arrived, and are standing at attention and in a straight line, birth order from left to right, in front of Ellen. Ellen chuckles]
Ellen: “Come on, I’m not a drill instructor.” [the other quints are still standing at attention. Ellen rolls her eyes] “Okay, fine, at ease.” [the quints relax their poses]
Zack: “I see your parcel has arrived.”
Drake: “Oh, that’s right. You ordered a parcel. What was it again?”
Ellen: “Begonia seeds! Bred from the yellowest in Nippon.” [points out the flowers growing around, including in the nearby living room] “We don’t have enough yellow around here. We’ve got red, pink, white, even orange. And yet hardly any yellow. This house could use more yellow.”
Vicky: “We’ve got lots of yellow outside.”
[Ellen looks out to the front lawn. There’s lots of yellow, alright. Yellow as in dandelions]
Ellen: “Oh, please, like those weeds actually count.”
Vicky: “They’re flowers, aren’t they?”
Filmore: “Mm-hmm.”
Ellen: “Dandelions are flowers in the same way honeydew is canteloupe. As in, it’s the cheap knockoff that shouldn’t be seen with the real thing.” [begins to open parcel] “And now, we open-a, da box-a.”
Zack: “My gourd, Ellen, you do a worse Istallion accent than Margo.”
Ellen: [goes cross-eyed] “Pasta pizza pasta pizza!” [laughs] “Alright, now let’s see these beauties! Well, the seeds that will one day sprout beauties.”
[the quints gather around as Ellen opens the parcel, watching with interest as she pushes back the flaps. Their smiles turn to confused expressions as they see a vespine sleeping in the box]
Ketcham quints: “Huh?”
[the vespine awakens]
[vespine]: “THIEEEEEF!” [darts up and stings Ellen on the cheek]
Ellen: “AAUGH!” [hands parcel to Filmore and grips her cheek in pain] “My goodness, does that sting!” [to Filmore] “Filmore, put that parcel somewhere it won’t get knocked over. AUGH!”
Filmore: “Mm-hmm.” [runs off. The vespine flies after him]
[vespine]: “Get back here with my precious babies, leporine! Guards!”
Drake: “Guards?”
[Filmore slips and is thrown to the floor, the seeds spilling from the parcel. Zack, Drake, and Vicky are confused, not seeing anything that could have caused him to trip like this. Vicky puts her head to the floor and sees…]
Vicky: “Myrmicines?” [the myrmicines see her and begin walking up to her] “Oh, come on. You guys are like, one-twelfth my size. What do you think you’re gonna…” [the myrmicines yank her by the braids and swing and bash her around like a ragdoll. Vicky lays silently in shock, before speaking again] “Eh, nothing I can’t take down.”
Ellen: “Vicky, do you hear yourself? They tossed you around like you were noth — AGGGH!”
Drake: “I’ll handle this!” [storms up, only to get thrown into the wall]
[vespine]: [lands on Drake’s head] “Give it up, leporines! You are no match for the incomparable queen Tyrannia Hawk, multiverse’s most beautiful, and her millions-strong myrmicine army!”
Zack: “Tyrannia Hawk? I’m… I’m guessing you’re Tyrannia Hawk?”
Tyrannia: “Indeed! And as the multiverse’s most beautiful…”
Vicky: [getting up] “By your own metric that nobody cares to understand.”
Tyrannia: “I have a right to all the most dazzling beauty in the nature of any land I conquer, from the most precious of gemstones to the most colorful of flowers!”
[Tyrannia claps; arachnine servants bring a throne to sit on. The throne bears a design fitting for a royal; gold with maroon cushions, and decorated with a single pearl at the end of each of the armrests. Ellen recognizes these pearls immediately]
Ellen: “Are those — OUUUCH! Are those my earrings?!”
Tyrannia: “No, they are my armrest decorations. Now make not one step closer, lest you wish to be stung once more!”
Vicky: “You’re not getting away with this!”
[Zack, Drake, Vicky, and Filmore charge toward Tyrannia, only to be thrown to the floors and walls by the army again]
Tyrannia: [laughs] “I already have.” [the servants carry her away on her throne as the army, some carrying the spilled seeds on their back, make off with the parcel] “Forward march!”
[Shaun and Roxanne come into the room, seeing Ellen wincing from the pain of the sting, and the rest of the quints on the floor and in the walls, impact craters surrounding them. They are dumbfounded and silent as they observe the damage]
Ellen: “Agh, I need an ice pack.”
Roxanne: “What happened here?!”
Zack: [points] “She did.”
[Shaun and Roxanne look to Tyrannia’s marching army]
Ellen: “She stung me and stole my earrings. And…” [hisses] “… my begonia seeds.”
Roxanne: “And you’re just letting her?”
Drake: “She’s got an army with her, mom. Myrmicines.” [gets up] “Don’t you think we would’ve tried to stop her?”
Roxanne: “I’ll handle this.” [marches over to Tyrannia and her army] “You! Vespine thief! Give my daughter back her –” [the army marching behind the throne throws her down the hall] “Fifty times their weight, right.”
[Roxanne lands at the front of the formation. She manages to grab the parcel… only for the army to move her like a crowd surfer into Tyrannia’s stinger, which gets into her nose]
Roxanne: “GAH!” [the army tosses her to the side] “Oof! Auuugh…”
Shaun: “Ooh, that’s gotta hurt.”
Roxanne: “Yeah, no shit.” [hands the parcel to Ellen and grips her nose. She speaks pained and nasally] “Well, I hope you think of a way to stop her, kids, because if I can’t, your father sure as hell can’t.”
Shaun: “Yep.” [beat] “Heyyyyy…”
Drake: “They’re going after the other flowers!”
[sure enough, more, previously-unseen myrmicines are picking up the pots on the windowsill, desks, and the floor of the foyer, as well as those in the living room. Vicky feels something tug on her left wrist. She sees that it’s the myrmicines removing her watch]
Vicky: “Not my watch!”
[the myrmicines unfasten the watch, re-fasten it away from Vicky, and throw it onto the throne, now in the living room, like a horseshoe to the pole]
Tyrannia: “Yes, the watch! You think I don’t know silver when I see it?” [claps] “Faster! Left-right-left-right-left-right-left-right!”
[myrmicine army]: “Hut hut hut hut hut hut hut hut!”
[soldiers at front]: 🎵 There she was, just a-walkin’ down the street / Singin’ 🎵
[myrmicine army]: 🎵 Do wah diddy diddy dum diddy do! 🎵
[soldiers at front]: 🎵 Snappin’ her fingers and shufflin’ her feet / Singin’ 🎵
[myrmicine army]: 🎵 Do wah diddy diddy dum diddy do! 🎵
[the army continues to sing as Shaun goes off]
Shaun: “It’s one thing to steal from my family, it’s another level of evil to do so ripping off a scene from a classic movie!”
Tyrannia: “I don’t know what you’re talking about, leporine father. I tell my army to sing this all the time. It’s my idea.”
Shaun: “No it’s not, you watched Stripes!”
Tyrannia: “I’ve never heard of that.”
Shaun: “Stop lying! You watched Stripes, and you’re passing marching to that song off as your idea!”
[the quints chase after the army as they open the door to the outside. Roxanne doesn’t look too fond of what Shaun has said]
Roxanne: “You have a strange sense of priorities.”
[outside, in the backyard. The army is still singing]
Tyrannia: [claps] “Wide formation!”
[the formation moves in a more horizontal orientation. The quints watch]
Vicky: [reaches under hat for slingshot] “I’ll take her out with my slingshot. Filmore, you got pebbles?”
Filmore: “Mm-hmm.” [takes a few out of his jacket pockets and throws them to Vicky]
Vicky: “Thanks.” [sets a pebble up and aims it]
Zack: “Remember, Vicky, not where she is, where she’s going to –“
Vicky: “Yes, Zack, I know, I’m not a dumbass.”
[Vicky aims the pebble to slightly in front of the throne, and fires it… only for it to be knocked out of the air by the kick of a vulpine tod landing to the ground. Another vulpine, a vixen, throws arachnid-shaped robots on the pots, throne, and parcel, causing them to levitate in the air. The myrmicines carrying the loot are caught off guard as they get lifted up. As for the throne, the arachnine servants hold on for a few seconds before falling, and a startled Tyrannia flies off]
Ketcham quints: “Huh?”
[The tod dashes to the side and punches the ground, creating a shockwave that destroys the still-grounded army and the servants, some getting killed instantly, some getting crushed by the clumps of dirt. One servant tries to get up, only to have his arms torn off by fragments of Filmore’s pebble, followed by a larger chunk crashing into his head as the coup-de-grâce. Filmore smiles]
[vixen]: [wielding a laser-gun] “Hands off the loot!”
[the myrmicines jump off the loot and run off in fear]
Tyrannia: “Zatch and Tracy?!”
Drake: “Zatch? What kind of a name is that?”
Zack: “I think she means ‘Zach’. With an ‘H’ instead of a ‘K’, and she’s pronouncing it in a pretentious way.”
Filmore: “Mm-hmm.”
Zach: “It’s Zach! And give it up, Tyrannia! You’re not running away this time!”
Tyrannia: “You’re right, I’m flying away!”
[Tyrannia flies off, attempting to hide near a stone-and-mortar wall. She attempts to hide in the grass, only for Zach to grab her by the stinger. Tracy walks up, pointing her laser gun at Tyrannia as she struggles in Zach’s grip. The quints go over to the wall to eavesdrop; Ellen and Vicky stop to retrieve their accessories off the still-floating throne]
Tyrannia: “Unhand me, insolent scoundrels! This is not how a queen is to be treated!”
Tracy: “Yeah, well, stealing from and stinging civilians aren’t how they’re to be treated, either. You’re coming with us!” [takes out portal gun and fires it at the wall]
Zack: “Wait, they’re leaving?” [to Zach and Tracy] “Wait, before you leave, can you set our things back down?”
Tracy: “Whoop! Right. Almost forgot.” [pushes button on the remote; the loot slowly lands back on the ground, and the arachnid-shaped bots return to her] “Sorry Tyrannia here had to cause you trouble. Maybe next time, we can have a crossover under more… light-hearted conditions.” [beat] “Sayonara.”
[Zach and Tracy walk through the portal, Tyrannia still being held by her stinger]
Tyrannia: “You’ve not dealt with the last of me! I shall return, and more powerful than before!”
Zach: “More powerful at being obnoxious?”
Tyrannia: “NYAAAAAH!”
[the portal closes. The quints look back at the pots and parcel]
Zack: “Alright, time to… get all this back inside.”
Filmore: “Mm-hmm.”
[Margo walks in, noticing the mess that has occurred, both from the attemped robbery and Zach’s collateral damage]
Margo: “What happened here?”
Well, now A-Ram has an idea of how I’d write a Zach and Tracy story, if he ever wishes to hire me for such a thing.
Anyways, here’s the second part of a belated birthday present for my social media friend of seven years, LoudToon99. He’s been with me since the days that social media’s cartoon community mostly hung out around MrEnter’s now-defunct DeviantArt account, and has stuck with me through the community’s migration to Twitter, and my decision to focus on my own intellectual property The Oddball Tetrad of Grunvale, New Pork. So for everything he’s done for me, I think it’s time I return the favor, with this artwork and ficlet featuring his own characters, Zach Ares and Tracy Morine. In a Grunvalified form, to thank him for his support of Grunvale when… not many others will give it.
Zach and Tracy here are both vulpines, the former a Fennec fox and the latter a Tibetan sand fox. And added to their rogues gallery is a character I’ve created for A-Ram to use himself, a vespine named Tyrannia Hawk, who is obsessed with beauty and seeks to own all of the most precious flowers and gemstones she comes across. And, as the name suggests, she’s a tarantula hawk wasp. I’ve wanted to create a tarantula hawk character for a while, as I think they’re some of the coolest-looking creatures in existence, and I know how painful their stings are.
…no, not from experience. But from Coyote Peterson’s probably-YouTube-content-violating encounter with one, that included letting it sting him. And I’m letting A-Ram have her! Zach and Tracy are in need of some cool villains to fight, so I thought Tyrannia would be a good start. If… if he wants to use her for his stories.
Anyways, happy… belated birthday, A-Ram. Even though this artwork came out the day after it and I wished you then. Sorry I’ve taken so long to post this, is what I’m trying to say. And as for the rest of you, if you liked this artwork and the ficlet, then drop me a follow on this blog, and on my socials, linked below. Until next time, take care, stay safe, support an Asimovian amendment for AI, and have a good one.
Twitter (Main): https://twitter.com/StormyAdlerPoG
Twitter (Art): https://twitter.com/TheOfficialOTOG
Instagram: www.instagram.com/phoenix_of_g…
Newgrounds: https://phoenixofgrunvale.newgrounds.com/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXj2NzDa8kzZ5mcliw4vT_w
Discord: Contact me by my tag (Stormy Adler, P.o.G.#1752) for an invite to my server.
Grunvale/OTOG is owned by me. You’re free to draw fanart or write fanfics of it, as long as you credit me as the creator of the series.
Zach and Tracy are owned by LoudToon99. As is Tyrannia Hawk should he decide he likes this character enough to have her as part of his series.
“Do Wah Diddy Diddy” was written by Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich; the ficlet was written with the Manfred Mann version in mind, recorded for The Mannfred Mann Album. I don’t know who owns the album today; all I know is that it was distributed by Ascot Records, at the time a subsidiary of United Artists.
This artwork was made at a resolution of 5076×2160 (aspect ratio 2.35:1).
The Gallery of Stormy Adler 