The Rise of the House of Toucan

RANKED 1st BY VOTERS IN CHARACTER CREATION CONTEST #27!

A bird with a brightly colored beak sits brooding among the branches of the World Tree. He does not look happy.

A squirrel scampers down from the higher branches and stops beside him. He notices that whatever the bird is looking at, it seems to be an infinity away. “Sam?” he asks.

The bird cocks an eye his way only slightly, and greets the squirrel without enthusiasm, “Hello, Ratatosk.”

“What are you doing here?” Ratatosk asked, moving from side to side a couple of times. Sam just looked at him. “Odin wants to know.”

“Odin?” gruffed the bird. “Since when does Odin take notice of any bird besides his ravens?”

Ratatosk scurried to the underside of the limb, as if dodging something. A few moments later he poked his head back around, and looked anxiously at the higher limbs, his head jerking first to one side, then the other as he peered between the branches. Cautiously climbing back to the topside of the branch, he gave one more nervous glance upwards, then stepped a little closer to Sam. “Since the bird is from another pantheon,” scolded the squirrel. “Now I ask again, what are you doing here?”

Sam looked perturbed, and waved his wings towards the messenger. “Oh, quit twitching your tail, tree rat! We all have claim to the World Tree. I know it, you know it, and Odin certainly knows it.” Ratatosk looked horrified, and in a frenzy did a couple of laps around the branch. Sam ignored him as he settled back down on his haunches and resumed his watch into the abyss.

“At any rate, I just came here for some perspective.” Sam glanced at the squirrel who had stopped his scramble to look at him quizzically, then added, “And to get away from Xibalba’s blathering.” He craned his neck downwards and shouted into the abyss, “King of the underworld for millennia on end! And still all he can talk about are the Six Houses! Like they’re the only ones who live there! Get. a. clue!” screeched the bird.

Ratatosk gasped, and his eyes got big. “You live in the nether realms, Sam?”

Sam jerked his head back around to the squirrel. “Why is that so hard to believe?” he demanded.

Ratatosk deflated a little, and answered, “Well, it’s just that…that…”

“That what?” bellowed Sam, stepping closer.

“…That…you-you’re…a toucan,” finished the squirrel. Withering a little further under Sam’s gaze, he added weakly, “You just don’t see many brightly colored netherworlders, is all.” Ratatosk reflexively started scanning the lower branches of the World Tree, avoiding the bird’s gaze.

Sam was fuming. “And why not?” he screamed. “Do you know who I am? I’m the great god Fallayershnozl! I'm the Pied Piper of Morning! Children follow me blindly for the promised taste of something I never give them! There’s no cherry in those loops! No orange! No anything! They’re all the same flavor! But they love them! They love me! Then they beg their parents to buy them more! I say, ‘Follow my nose,’ and those kids will follow me anywhere! Anywhere!” Leaning from the branch, Sam screams again into the abyss, “Let’s see Xibalba do that!” As he straightened back up, his tailfeathers fell away, and the skin underneath was red.

“Uh, Sam…” started Ratatosk.

“Do you know how hard it is for someone from the nether realms to get humans to follow them?” interrupted Sam. “It’s near impossible!” he shouted, throwing his wings wide. As he did so, the feathers at his wingtips flew outwards, leaving more red skin underneath. “I not only got humans to follow me, I got other humans to help me! An advertising agency will sell their souls for a buck…and did,” he cooed. “The love of money really is the root of all evil, you know.” He rubbed his wings together, clearly savoring the memory, and more feathers fell from his wings, leaving bright red skin underneath.

Ratatosk laid his ears back a little, and took a few steps backwards. Sam continued to rant.

“Is that good enough for Xibalba though? Noooo! ‘That’s not the way we do things, Sam.’” More feathers fell away.

“‘That’s too commercial, Sam.’” Great tufts fell away, and nothing but bright red skin underneath.

“‘We already have Six Houses, Sam.’” The toucan began to grow as he ranted, towering over Ratatosk like the World Tree itself.

“‘You’re just a toucan, Sam!’” A second pair of eyes appeared just over his first pair, and they started glowing with yellow energy.

“Well? I’m not ‘just a toucan’ anymore, AM I?” he bellowed, shaking the boughs of the World Tree with his thunderous voice.

“Today is the start of Toucan House! Today marks the beginning of the time of Toucan! Beware, Xibalba! BEWARE THE POWER OF TOUCAN THE TERRIBLE!” The giant red toucan roared with laughter, and his top pair of eyes smoldered with energy.

Ratatosk scampered backwards as quick as he could, and started to climb the World Tree. Toucan the Terrible spotted him, and his voice echoed, “Where are you going, tree rat?” His top eyes glowed brightly, and then energy beams lanced outwards and reduced the squirrel to a pile of ash.

The ash pile smoldered for a few seconds, then shifted slightly, and Ratatosk rose again from his own demise, shaking the remaining ashes from his fur. “You know, that’s not very nice,” he said to the giant toucan.

Toucan the Terrible smiled cruelly and chuckled fearsomely. “Be glad I have use for you, Messenger. Scamper back to Odin and tell him to mind his own pantheon, and Toucan the Terrible will mind his. Tell him to hope that I do not decide I want another pantheon as well. Now begone.”

Ratatosk looked on his former friend Sam in horror. Then he bolted up the trunk of the World Tree, tail twitching the entire way.

Toucan the Terrible laughed, and laughed, and laughed.

Story and characters owned by Chris Bishop, copyright 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023.

Comment	Who
cbishop: Gets my vote, kept on imagining Toucan Sam :)	batkevin74
batkevin74: That's who it is! lol ...That's why he's talking about the Froot Loops, and getting the kids to follow him, and "follow my nose." :)	cbishop
cbishop: You get my vote	RazzaTazz
Cbishop stole my vote from IC. His was just too funny/dark	wildvine
razzatazz: Thanks very much! wildvine: Coming from the writer of Howard the Duck fics and Knight and Dae, I take that as a high compliment. :)	cbishop
cbishop: Living in a country where there are no Fruit Loops and no Toucan Sam I didn't get a lot of the references. Still the fusion of Norse and Mayan mythology was an interesting twist.	ImpurestCheese
impurestcheese: No Froot Loops? No Toucan Sam?! What kind of crazy country are you living in?!? You poor woman!!!! ;)	cbishop
cbishop: The United Kingdom. European Legislation due to high levels of sugar and salt found in the loops. They were introduced for a few months around the Olympics but were taken off shelves by November 2012	ImpurestCheese
Bishops was just too good.	kfhrfdu_89_76k
kfhrfdu_89_76k: Thanks for the vote! :)	cbishop
Looks like CB is gonna steal another win.	wildvine
wildvine: Yep looks like it	ImpurestCheese
wildvine: impurestcheese: Maybe, last minute changes have happened before.	cbishop
cbishop: I wasn't challenging the universe to come up with voters. No siree	wildvine
wildvine: lol	cbishop
wildvine: cbishop: What you must remember is that the universe has a sense of humour.	ImpurestCheese
I really liked CB's and found it well-written, however, the references were lost on me and my European way of thinking :P	MaccyD
And with that the voting was over	ImpurestCheese
	wildvine
wildvine: I laughed aloud at that picture.That is awesome! :D I'll have a new CCC up in a few days.	cbishop
cbishop: Congrats by the way. Sorry it's late, have had graduation ect	ImpurestCheese
cbishop: Congratulations CB ^_^d	wildvine
wildvine: impurestcheese: Thank you both. I am trying to think of the next contest. :}	cbishop

Thanks for stopping in! :^D

The Origins Behind the Origins (or how some of these characters got their names):

This scene is from .Captain Marvel Bunny and the Hill of Holes, and it picks up directly at the end of The Rise of the House of Toucan. He is forced to explore various holes to alternate dimensions to find the one that leads back to the Rock of Eternity. At the end of the first issue, a hole takes him to...

The World Tree:

The Captain quickly covered his ears, as the space around him echoed with the most thunderous laughter he had ever heard. As the guffawing died down, he took his hands away from his ears, and curious of its source, looked around the wondrous space before him. Seeing a giant squirrel scurry up the humongous tree, he was about to call after it when he spied a giant red bird with four eyes staring back at him.

"Who dares to intrude on Toucan the Terrible?" it rumbled.

"Oh, heck no," the Captain said without fear. "Nothing personal. I simply don't have the time to deal with you. SHAZAM!" and he disappeaeard again.

Because of Captain Marvel Bunny, this scene can't be canon as it is. I plan to rewrite it slightly for a later issue of Toucan's so that CMB isn't named, and "SHAZAM" isn't yelled.

This scene is from .The Nexus Ranger vs The Mechanape, and it picks up directly at the end of the extra scene from .Captain Marvel Bunny and the Hill of Holes. Roderick Nim, the Nexus Ranger is chasing a Mechanape through portals, and one of them leads to the World Tree. Toucan asking "Another intrustion?" refers to Nim getting there just after the Mechanape, but also implies that Captain Marvel Bunny just left for anyone that has read all of the stories.

A puff of mist heralding his arrival, Nim doubled over and threw up.

"Another intrusion?" said a booming voice. The ranger wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then looked up to see that it belonged to a gigantic red bird with four yellow eyes, sitting in the biggest tree he had ever seen. Under one of it's massive claws, it had The Mechanape pinned. Or it did until a nexus opened up underneath, and the cybernetic gorilla fell through. The bird stumbled slightly as its foot slipped through as well, but it drew it out of the nexus just before it closed. "Hm," it said as it looked at the bottom of its foot, checking for the beast. Seeing nothing, it looked again to Nim, and said, "And who are you?"

Nim stood up slowly, hands drifting instinctively to his holsters, making sure his guns were still there, but he did not draw. "I'm chasing the creature that just disappeared from under your foot. The Mechanape is a fugitive," he said. Direct explanations were often best when jumping dimensions.

The bird's top set of eyes smoldered slightly, but it said, "So go after it while you are still able."

"Thank you," Nim said respectfully, "but... how? The nexus closed behind it. I've heard of the World Tree- it's the mother of all nexuses, but I don't know how to navigate it."

"That branch, there," came a voice from behind him.

Nim jumped with a start, and turned to see a furry creature pointing to a low hanging branch. "You are the biggest squirrel I've ever seen."

"My name is Ratatosk," said the squirrel. "Get to that branch before Toucan the Terrible changes his mind."

Hearing the bird's name, Nim looked to him cautiously.

Eyes still smoldering, Toucan the Terrible said, "You should listen to the tree rat."

Wasting no time, Nim jogged over to the branch and jumped up to catch hold. Pulling himself up, he stood and walked in the direction that Ratatosk pointed. The branch climbed and curved steeply, and Nim followed it until he reached the end. "Now what?" he asked aloud, looking out into the black void.

"Jump," he heard Ratatosk's voice echo from below.

With no real alternative, Nim did as he was told. The inky darkness swallowed him up, and he was gone.

Looking a few branches up towards the bird, Ratatosk said, "You know I don't like it when you call me that, Sam," he said.

The bird's smoldering eyes lit up brightly, and two beams lanced out, reducing the squirrel to a pile of ash. The four yellow eyes narrowed, and the toucan laughed cruelly.

The ash shifted, and Ratatosk rose from the pile, shaking the ash from his fur. Glaring at the bird, he said, "I don't like that either."

Toucan the Terrible threw his head back and laughed loudly into the darkness.

That's all for now. Thanks for reading. -cb :^D

@cbishop:

Weirdist story ever written. Period. I love it.

@cbishop: Ah sweet nostalgia

LOL. This was @impurestcheese's challenge for CCC 27, and I really didn't know what to do with it. I've had the character Toucan the Terrible on my character list for a long time, and this seemed like the perfect time to write his origin. I've never wanted to do too much with the name, because I figured it would be impossible to avoid Toucan Sam cracks. It finally hit me: just go with that. lol So there you have it. :)

@cbishop: You summoned me? And yes it is, BTW when is the next contest, has it already started yet?

@impurestcheese:

Our last winner is still pondering a theme.

Although I didn't know what to do with this at first, I wound up having a lot of fun with this contest. :)

@cbishop: Good

@cbishop: I am glad I read this as for you disclaimer

Destruction of your childhood memories. Bird on squirrel violence.

Again being British we didn't have fruit loops. As for the disclaimer I had a squirrel swipe a long tailed tit off my bird feeder this morning so I'm used to it, and this was before the parakeets descended and began forcing the squirrel away.

Love the fusion of mythologies as well. Presumably Sam is ex-Mayan (to use the umbrella term for all the sects) so that means his beak will be over flowing in human blood. Heaven help us if he decided to joint the Aztec pantheon and became the sun, the most prodigious position in the pantheon. Forgets the rain (jaguars), global hurricanes, rain (fire), rain (blood) and earthquakes, he could come up with some horrible things.

My idea was that Toucan House would be a new house of Xibulba, since I know nothing about the actual houses outside of the little bit Imp' gave us for the original contest.

Behind the scenes, I've hooked Sam up with some other mythologies before going "D'oh," and realizing they were different. I was very happy to see them under the blanket of Meso American mythology, because it was like, "Oh, this can still work." lol

Really though, I think I'm overthinking it. I mean, currently, he's living basically next door to Oz, so how accurate do I need to be, really? lol

We probably shouldn't have them either. Every now and again, someone will pipe up and say that when we go to the grocery store, we should stay out of the aisles, and just shop the outside ring of the store- meat, dairy, bakery. I don't think that holds completely true, but most of what's in the aisles is processed out the wazoo. Unfortunately, it's also often cheaper than the stuff that's better for you. The US has an obesity problem for a reason. <sigh>

The US has an obesity problem for a reason. <sigh>

*Random thought trigger*

The Purge x Saw crossover. President Jigsaw has decreed that to solve the obesity/food price issue, for one night a year people can eat each other.

*Doo doo doo doo doo doo*

"Hello America, I know how you like to eat. So tonight, I offer you a choice. Eat or be eaten. Feast or fight for you lives. Dine or die. The choice-est meat is yours."

You are a wild, weird treasure. :)

I saw this comic, and thought of this paragraph from the story:

“Do you know how hard it is for someone from the nether realms to get humans to follow them?” interrupted Sam. “It’s near impossible!” he shouted, throwing his wings wide. As he did so, the feathers at his wingtips flew outwards, leaving more red skin underneath. “I not only got humans to follow me, I got other humans to help me! An advertising agency will sell their souls for a buck…and did,” he cooed. “The love of money really is the root of all evil, you know.” He rubbed his wings together, clearly savoring the memory, and more feathers fell from his wings, leaving bright red skin underneath.

Huh well I'll be dammed. It was a toucan in the Garden. I thought it was just me tempting the humans...I mean hello fellow human, lovely weather we're having today.

Silly Sundown'! Deception is for tricksters!

...or something. ;)

P.S. That's a play on the animated commercials for the US breakfast cereal Trix. The Trix Rabbit would try to steal the box of Trix from kids. They'd get it back, and say, "Silly Rabbit! Trix are for kids!" ;)