How do you like my new fun way to summarize OS fanfics? I'm enjoying it so far. Anyway, to the fic!
Oscar walked down the hall of doors, waving to people cheerily as he went. He was so excited that his new gadget was finally finished. Now all he had to do was go back to the lab and find a drawer space for it. Oh, wait, he almost forgot about the New Gadget form. Okay, so he had to go back to the lab, find a pencil and some paper, make a list of the things he had to do, fill out the New Gadget form, and –
He was so busy counting his tasks on his fingers that he didn't see who he crashed into. All he knew was that the force of the collision knocked him off his feet.
"Oof!" There was a quick blue flash and a long beep coupled with a whirr, and Oscar managed to straighten his glasses. He opened his eyes and found three Oscars sitting on the floor around him, complete with bowties and lab coats. One was holding a hexagonal folder, one was holding a juice box, and one was holding a briefcase plastered with Soundcheck pictures.
"Uh-oh," Oscar said. The others didn't seem to have noticed something was amiss yet; they were all still groaning in mild pain. Oscar fidgeted nervously. "Uh, um… Do you mind letting me know who you guys are?" He eyed the juice box Oscar uneasily. Please don't be Ms. O, please don't be Ms. O, please don't be Ms. O…
"What do you mean, who we are?" Nope, the growl and the subsequent stern sip from the purple curly straw were both unmistakable. Drat. Oscar was going to be in even bigger trouble now.
"Wait… What's going on?" That was the folder Oscar, gaping around at the surplus of scientists.
The Soundcheck Oscar held up his unfamiliar hands, and then started to panic. "Ah! I'm Oscar! And…" he pointed at folder Oscar, "you're Oscar! What happened? This is so wrong!"
"Oscar!" Ms. O yelled. "What have you done?"
"Well, I invented this really cool gadget called the Oscar-inator!" He belatedly remembered that he wasn't supposed to be proud of that and tried to seem less excited. "I think it might have gone off just now. And, um, it makes people look like me."
"Why would you make something like that?" folder Oscar asked incredulously. Again, Oscar recognized the chiding tone without a doubt: Olive.
"I don't know! I thought it might be useful!"
"How?" they all demanded in unison.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" he insisted, squirming guiltily. "Don't worry, okay? I can fix this." He bounced up to his feet again, followed by Ms. O, Olive, and Soundcheck Oscar – had to be Otto. "To the lab!"
"Okay, so here's how the Oscar-inator works. See this little capsule here?" He held up the gadget, pointing to the glass cylinder full of bright green liquid connecting the circuits. "It's got this chemical that I mixed up that's basically everything about me. I guess you could call it, uh, 'Essence of Oscar', heh!" His joke fell flat in front of his annoyed audience, and he laughed awkwardly again before plundering on. "And I can make them for you guys too, and switch out the capsules, and change you back!"
"Great," Otto said. Then he glanced down. "Wait… when did I start holding onto my jacket?"
"And since when does the lab feel so fun and inviting?" Olive added, looking around and smiling slightly in spite of her confusion.
Otto nodded in agreement. "Yeah, it even looks kind of shinier in here!"
"I thought it was just me," Ms. O said grimly. "Oscar, something very odd is happening here. We need to go see Dr. O."
Dr. O looked at the gadget with a magnifying glass. "Hm." She put a checkmark on a piece of paper in blue crayon and looked at the gadget again. "Hm," she repeated. She put another checkmark, but in red crayon, and took another look. "Hm."
Before she could reach for the yellow crayon, Olive interrupted in an exasperated voice, "Do you mind telling us what you're getting out of this, Doctor?"
Dr. O put down the magnifying glass and handed the gadget back to Oscar. "Not at all. Oscar meant to make a mixture that would make people look like him, and as you can see, it was successful. However, it seems that the mixture is powerful enough that it's making you act, think, and feel like Oscar."
"But I'm not Oscar!" Otto protested. "I'm me!"
"That's because the gadget hasn't taken full effect yet. Which is good news for the three of you, because once it does, there's no turning you back. You'll be exactly like Oscar, and you'll never remember who you were before."
They exchanged horrified looks. "Is there anything you can do?" Olive asked.
"Of course, I'm a doctor. I can help you slow down the effects. Olive, go down to the Odd Squad gym and play basketball."
"Right away, Doctor."
"Otto, go put on some Soundcheck and dance your heart out."
"Sweet!"
"Ms. O, go to the dinosaur room and fight some dinosaurs."
"Good work, Doctor. Heh." Ms. O paused, turned, and gave Oscar a ferocious glare. "And I do not appreciate this sudden urge to laugh after everything I say."
Oscar shrunk back a little as she stalked out of the room. "I'm… gonna get started on those new chemicals." He hurried out of the medical bay.
"What's next?"
Oscar beamed at his strange assortment of objects: a slice of pizza, a party horn, a pair of Odd Squad issued headphones, a notepad, a basketball, a red hair tie, a Schmumber's juice box, a beaded necklace, and a black karate belt. "Okie-doke!" he said to no one in particular, laughing a little. "We're all set to boil these!"
He used the shrink-inator on the larger ingredients and separated them into three different Erlenmeyer flasks of water on Bunsen burners. "A hundred degrees Celsius is the boiling point for water," he muttered, fiddling with the dials, "So a hundred twenty should be high enough!" He straightened up. "Great! I'll just give these some time to boil and check on the others!"
As it transpired, the others were getting worse by the minute, despite Dr. O's best efforts. First Dr. O took Oscar to see Olive. When they walked into the gym, she was chasing after a rogue basketball that had bounced off the rim of the hoop. "I don't understand it," she said in dismay, her breaths heavy, after she'd jogged over to them. "I can't remember the last time I missed a layup!"
Next they visited Otto. He was right in the middle of dancing to Soundcheck's new hit song, "Turn the Thermostat Up, Baby". When they arrived, Oscar thought things were going well. But then Otto added in a silly little spin accompanied by some jerky arm movements – nothing like neat, effortless turns he usually did. He stumbled and shouted in bewilderment over the heavy beat of the bass, "Why did I do that? It doesn't even fit the meter!"
Last, but certainly not least, was Ms. O, who they found sitting on the concrete floor outside of the dinosaur room.
"Ms. O," Dr. O said, "I told you to fight the dinosaurs, not guard them."
"Well, funny story about that," Ms. O said, sounding very unlike herself and eerily similar to Oscar. "I went into the room and I was going to fight a dinosaur, I really was, but they looked so scary! And before I knew it, I was back out here."
"This is not good," Dr. O said to Oscar. "We need that gadget ready, and soon."
"Right away, Doc, heh!" Oscar said, turning on his heel and rushing back towards the lab. Every second that went by felt like a tick on a time bomb. And with every tick Oscar's optimism faltered, and his apprehension grew.
"Oh, no," Oscar said in horror. He'd expected that by the time he got back from calling on Dr. O's patients all three of the mixtures would be boiling steadily, and he'd be able to finish them up, no problem. But that wasn't the case. The Otto beaker was doing fine, and so was Ms. O's. Olive's was a different story. Tiny bubbles had only just started to form along the bottom of the flask. "How did this happen?" Oscar fretted. "I set them all for the same temperat –" He stopped, taking a closer look at the dial on the middle Bunsen burner. Oh. So that's what the problem was. The middle burner's dial was set to 120 degrees Fahrenheit, not Celsius. It was a totally different way of measuring temperature, and the numbers meant different things. In Fahrenheit, the boiling point for water wasn't 100 degrees, it was 210 degrees. Oscar cranked up the dial to 230 degrees Fahrenheit. There. Now they were all around the same temperature, despite the differences in the numbers.
While he waited for that last mixture to finish up, he prepared Ms. O's and Otto's capsules. He pulled the Oscar capsule out of the gadget, set it on the table, and replaced it with the Ms. O capsule. He tried to ease his nerves by humming a little tune. Everything was going to be all right, he tried to assure himself, if only that last mixture would hurry up and boil.
By the time Dr. O charged in with the three extra Oscars, the real Oscar had resorted to sitting in front of the flask and trying to make it boil through sheer willpower. Dr. O and her patients all looked very worried, except for the last one, who was holding a large plate of carrot sticks with ranch dip and munching on them happily.
"This is amazing!" he exclaimed, and Oscar guessed that it was probably Otto. "I've never had carrots this delicious in my whole life! They're so fresh and sweet and –"
"Oscar," Dr. O said, ignoring Otto, "we need to change them back, stat. There's only seconds left before we lose them!"
So Oscar blasted Ms. O with the gadget, switched the capsule, and blasted Otto, too. He ate another carrot and his face fell a little in disappointment. "Eh. Okay, I guess."
"Oscar," Olive said urgently, "what about me?"
"Did I not make myself clear when I said we had seconds?" Dr. O barked.
"I'm trying my best, Doctor, but –" And miraculously, just as he spun around to gesture helplessly at the last mixture, it was boiling. He lunged across the table, filled the capsule as quickly as he could, and fired the gadget.
Olive was herself again, and they all breathed a sigh of relief.
"It's good to be back," Olive said with a smile.
"Thank you for all your help, Dr. O," Ms. O said. Then, rounding on Oscar, she became more formidable. "And Oscar…"
"Of course!" Oscar nodded hastily. "Never again! I'll never let this happen again, no way, no how, heh! Let me just lock this gadget up and –" Turning the gadget nervously in his hands, he accidentally pressed the button.
There was a quick blue flash and a long beep coupled with a whirr, and Oscar caught a glimpse of himself in a nearby mirror. He looked exactly like Olive.
"Oh, don't worry!" he said to the others, who looked alarmed. "I already have an Oscar capsule, remember? Now, where'd that thing go?" Taking a step forward, he heard a small crunch. Green liquid pooled out from underneath his sneaker.
The two Olives made eye contact.
"Crumpets!"
If it seems like I'm poking fun at Oscar a little it's just because I love him. Tell me what you thought!