Hi! First OS fanfic! No shipping in this one (the next one I have planned is a very different story though). Hope you enjoy!
A woman sat on a subway, peering around nervously. Suddenly, there was a whoosh and another whoosh, and from the (still closed) doors at the end of the car appeared two Odd Squad agents.
"Oh, Odd Squad, there you are," the woman said, waving them over.
"What seems to be the problem, ma'am?" Olive asked.
"Well, it's this pole. I tried to hold onto it so I wouldn't get jostled around by the train, and…" She stood up and gripped the pole, and immediately it started to wriggle and twist and shake, giggling all the while.
"It think it's a ticklish pole," Otto said, amazed.
"It's not really a big deal," the woman said apologetically, "but I like to leave the seats for other people."
"Not to worry, ma'am, we can fix this," Otto assured her. Then he turned to Olive. "Can we?"
Olive contemplated the pole. "I've never seen anything like this before, so I'm not sure." Then she had an idea. "Oh! Maybe you could tickle it until it gets used to it and stops being so ticklish."
Otto nodded, smiling smugly. "Stand back. I got this."
Just as he started to tickle the pole, Olive heard the familiar ringtone of her badge phone. She automatically lifted her hand to where her badge usually sat on her chest, but nothing was there. She checked all of her pockets, then the floor. She could still hear the ringing.
"Olive – ah – Olive, help – ahah – it's tickling me back!" Otto yelled, breathless with laughter.
"Otto, be quiet!" Olive said, feeling around frantically on the floor. "I'm trying to find my –"
Then she opened her eyes, and saw her badge phone sitting on her nightstand where it was supposed to be, ringing. She breathed a sigh of relief and picked it up.
"Go for –" she broke off for a yawn, "Olive."
"Olive, Otto! In the park, now!"
Olive held the phone away from her ear, wincing. "Ms. O, Otto's not here. I'm at home. Sleeping," she added pointedly.
"Well, wake up, because there's a situation in the park and I need you two to handle it."
Olive nodded, already getting out of bed. "Right away, as soon as I'm dressed –"
"There's no time! Take your badge and go!" She hung up.
Olive sighed. "Pajamas it is, then."
"Okay, where's this 'situation'?" Otto asked, looking around.
Olive strained her eyes as they walked. The sky was cloudy, and the park was almost completely dark. "I don't know."
Just as she said it, a pulsing, green light became visible in the distance.
"What is that?" Otto said warily. They shared a glance, and then ran the rest of the way to the light, which – as they got closer – proved to be emanating from what looked like a flying saucer.
"I'll call Ms. O?" Olive suggested, sounding much calmer than she felt. Otto nodded, still staring slightly slack-jawed at the flying saucer.
"Go for O."
"Ms. O, there's a spaceship in the park!"
"I know."
"You know?" Olive and Otto repeated in unison.
"Yes. That's why I sent you. A few years ago I signed an agreement with Mayor Macklemore that in the case of an alien invasion, Odd Squad would handle it and the mayor would hide in his basement."
"Well, what are we supposed to do?" Olive asked incredulously.
"Figure out why they're here and then figure out how to get them to leave. Be careful and professional. You're not just Odd Squad agents anymore – you're intergalactic ambassadors. The first impression you make tonight could change the fate of the entire world." Ms. O paused. "But no pressure."
Olive nodded faintly and hung up. "So… I guess we have to talk to them."
"Yeah." They continued on. "You know," Otto said thoughtfully, "this is kind of scary. But it's also kind of cool. I mean, we get to talk to real, live aliens! How many chances does a kid have to talk to real, live aliens?"
"Let's just hope they're nice. And let's hope they're willing to –" Olive stopped abruptly, throwing out an arm to halt Otto too. A figure was approaching from the spaceship.
When the alien reached them it simply stood staring, silent and still. Olive wondered if Otto was holding his breath too. Then in a sudden motion, the alien stepped forward and grabbed Otto by his shirt collar.
"W-ah!"
"You carry documentation of our spacecraft," the alien said. "Where did you acquire the information necessary for such a depiction?"
"What? I-I don't know what you're talking about!" Otto yelped.
The alien extended a long finger, pointing to Otto's shirt. "Ohhh," Olive said under her breath, finally understanding. The image on the front of Otto's shirt was a rocket, a flying saucer, and some stars. The same pattern was on his pajama pants.
Otto seemed to come to the same realization. "Woah, man, you got the wrong idea. This is just made up! Some people think you're real but a lot of people think it's just in stories." When the alien didn't look convinced he went on. "And we have our own, uh, spacecrafts too! See?" He pointed at the different parts of the picture. "This one looks like ours, and that one looks like yours."
In a flash of inspiration, Olive added, "So I guess you could say this shirt is a symbol of the friendship we hope to have!"
Otto nodded furiously in agreement.
"Hm," The alien said after a tense silence. "If this is truthful…"
Their voices overlapped in desperate affirmation.
"…then we graciously accept your offer of friendship." The alien released Otto's shirt.
"Aw, man, what a relief! You know, I've always wanted to meet an alien!" Otto said conversationally. "Although, I guess you don't call yourselves aliens, huh? I guess we're the aliens. Anyway, I've always wanted to meet someone from another planet. Hey, what planet are you from?"
"Esayvvarr."
Otto furrowed his brow and tried to repeat the name. "Es…uh…yeah, that's gonna take some practice. But I'll work on it!" he insisted.
Olive saw that if she didn't intervene, Otto would talk to the aliens until morning and then invite them to stay a while. "We've been sent to find out why you've landed here."
The alien nodded solemnly. "We suspected our host would wish to know such a thing. We did not intend to land here. We are experiencing mechanical difficulties. We require significant time to make repairs."
"Sounds good to me –" Otto started, but Olive jabbed him with her elbow.
"Please excuse us for a moment." She dragged him a few yards away. "Otto, we can't let aliens hang around in the park fixing their flying saucer!"
"Why not?"
"I can think of at least a million reasons why not!" She sighed, dragging a hand over her face. "Look, let me call Ms. O and ask her what to do."
As it turned out, Ms. O was in agreement with Olive that the aliens had to go, and soon. "Part of my contract with the mayor says that if the alien invasion is overnight we have to take care of it by morning."
"Morning? But…" Olive checked her watch. "It's already eleven o'clock!"
"And you have until six at the latest."
"Wait," Otto interjected. "How does that work? The number six comes before the number eleven."
"Yeah, but we have the same hours every day, so it has to reset somewhere. That's at midnight, in an hour. Right now we're at the eleven before midnight, eleven PM. Six AM is the six after midnight. So if you count the numbers in between on the watch, that's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven hours. And who knows how long they need!" She finished hopelessly.
Otto, however, was smiling. "Don't worry, Olive. I think we're forgetting something that could be useful."
Oscar answered the door in pinstriped pajamas, tousle-haired, blinking sleepily, and clutching Norman the teddy bear. "Oh, hey, guys. What are you doing here?" He yawned.
"We need your help," Olive started.
"Want to meet some aliens?" Otto simply said.
Oscar suddenly seemed much more awake. "What? Are you kidding? Yes! Just let me grab my glasses!"
"While you're at it, get as many gadgets as you can."
"Hey, there! I'm Oscar, heh!" Oscar stuck out his hand to shake.
The alien mechanic looked him over briefly and nodded. "I am Rosmavyra." He turned back to the engine of the ship.
Oscar hesitated, then put his outstretched arm down. "Great to meet you!" He laughed nervously and put his hands up to his shirt, but seemed to realize that he didn't have any lapels to grip at the last moment and ended up just swinging his arms awkwardly.
"Now that introductions have been made, we really need to get to work fast," Olive reminded Oscar.
"You have advanced technological devices, you say?" The alien asked.
"Yep! I bet my gadgets could do just about anything, heh," Oscar said proudly.
"And like that," Otto contributed, snapping his fingers.
"If this is the case, I entrust this task to you." The alien left.
Oscar waved goodbye and then crouched down next to the open metal hatch in the side of the spacecraft. "Let's see, what do we got here… Maybe I'll try… This!" With a ding! he pulled out a gadget. "The egg-inator!"
"The egg-inator?" Olive repeated. "Oscar, are you sure that's a good idea?"
"Well, we have to start somewhere," Oscar reasoned. "Besides, the worst it'll do is splatter eggs all over, heh."
Olive and Otto shared a glance, then put their hands up to protect their faces while Oscar fired the egg-inator. But when he did, there weren't any eggs.
"Whoops," Oscar said in a small, high voice.
"What happened?" Olive couldn't see the engine; Oscar was still in front of the hatch.
"Oh – Ah – Nothing! Nothing!" Oscar looked over his shoulder and gave them a frenzied thumbs-up, but he didn't move away, and in fact seemed to be blocking their view of the engine on purpose.
"Oscar, what'd you do?" Otto said suspiciously.
Oscar gave up, hanging his head and moving out of the way. Where the engine had sat a moment ago, there was now a giant egg.
"Oscar!" Olive and Otto reprimanded.
"I didn't mean to!" Oscar insisted woefully.
"Do you have an un-egg-inator?" Olive asked.
"Yeah! Kind of… No…"
"Oscar!" They yelled again.
"I'm sorry! I try to make gadgets that can counteract the other gadgets but sometimes I forget!"
Olive groaned in frustration. "Of all the hundreds of gadgets you have to use, the one you pick is the egg-inator?" There were reasons that Oscar didn't do much field work; his inability to think ahead was one of them.
"We can fix this, I promise! I mean, I'm like, fifty percent sure. All I have to do is find a gadget that's the opposite of the egg-inator and they'll cancel each other out! Let's see, uh… bacon-inator?" He fired it, and bacon flew everywhere.
"Ugh, grease," Olive said. Otto, on the other hand, had picked a strip of bacon off his shoulder and already had half of it in his mouth.
"Maybe the toast-inator?"
They were bombarded with toast. Otto looked like he was enjoying himself and started to make a sandwich.
"Um… tomato-inator?"
Otto's smile grew and he added the new ingredient to his sandwich.
"Oscar, are you just going to sit here all night blasting the engine with food gadgets until you find one that works?" Olive snapped impatiently.
"What else can I do? Oh, wait… maybe it shouldn't be a food, because that would give them something in common! Let's see… eggs are edible, round, and fragile. What's inedible, has sharp angles, and is really tough? Got it! Diamond-inator!" He laughed victoriously and fired the gadget. There was a bang of smoke, and they all started coughing.
"Whoops," Oscar said again when the smoke cleared.
The engine had disappeared completely.
"Oscar!"
Oscar started to twist his hands together guiltily. "Well… at least we know what the opposite of an egg-inator is now! Right? Heh-heh…" He wilted under the force of their glares.
"What are we supposed to do?" Otto moaned. "We don't know how to build a flying saucer engine!"
"We can't keep this to ourselves anymore," Olive said. "We have to tell them what happened, and apologize, and offer to do everything we can to help fix this."
"You're sure you don't want me to come?" Oscar asked again.
"We're sure," Olive said.
"Just stay here and try not to turn anything into an egg," Otto added.
"Okay… Have fun!" Oscar waved halfheartedly as they walked out of the park.
"How much time do we have left?" Otto asked.
Olive looked at her watch. "Well, at eleven we had seven hours. Now it's one AM, which is two hours later. So that means we have seven, six, five hours."
"And what were the things we had to find?"
Olive ticked the items off on her fingers. "A box of heat, a soft and thick sack, a rod of light, a block of even leaves, and a strong and sharp water vessel."
"How are we supposed to know what those things are, though?"
"Well… I don't want to any more than you do, but…" Olive held up a rattle.
Their footsteps echoed through the warehouse. Somewhere far away, water was dripping. Suddenly, there was a giggle, and then the sound of something clattering to the cement floor. They looked over their shoulders, saw nothing, and turned back facing front.
"Ah!"
"Hello, Odd Squad," Rivka said. "You come much later than usual." Then, with a slight edge of irritation, "You wake baby." The baby whimpered, as if in agreement.
Olive tried to smile politely. "We are very sorry to disturb you, and I assure you we wouldn't have if it wasn't so important."
"Nothing is more important than rest to Baby Genius."
"Not even aliens?" Otto said boldly. The whimpering of the baby stopped, and Rivka suddenly looked interested.
"Aliens? Where?"
"In the –"
Olive stepped on his foot. "That's classified Odd Squad information. We need Baby Genius's help to figure out what these objects might be." She held out the paper she'd written the descriptions on.
"That's classified Baby Genius information," Rivka mimicked. "However… We may be able to make a trade."
"What kind of trade?" Olive asked carefully.
"Being Baby Genius is hard work. Baby will sometimes like a vacation. An alien planet is sounding like a pleasant spot. What is it called?"
Olive glanced at Otto, and nodded. Otto cleared his throat. "Um… Es-yuh-var. I think that's how it's pronounced."
Rikvka looked unimpressed. "Can you, perhaps, spell it?"
Otto's brow crinkled in thought. "E-S-Y-V-A-R. I think. I might have missed a letter in there."
"I suppose Baby Genius will have to make do with half-baked Chicken Boy information."
"Seriously?" Otto complained. "You're still calling me that?"
Olive ignored him and held out the paper again, hoping. Rivka took it and placed it under the carriage curtain. The baby cooed and another slip of paper was pushed out. Olive opened it. "A toaster," she read, "a pillow, a flashlight, a sheaf of paper, and a cactus."
"That's it?" Otto said in disbelief. He read the paper over her shoulder, and when they both looked up, the nanny and carriage were gone.
The woman slammed the door shut, and Otto groaned. "Aw, man. Who knew it'd be so hard to find a cactus in an ordinary Canadian town at three in the morning?" They turned away from the tenth house where they'd asked. Everything else on their list had been secured, but the cactus was giving them trouble.
"What if we can't find one before morning?" Olive lamented.
"We could grow one, I guess… Might be faster than going door to door," Otto grumbled.
Olive suddenly grabbed his shoulder. "Otto, that's it! I can't believe I forgot!"
"What, what?"
"There's a cactus-inator."
Otto slowly nodded, finishing her thought. "And I bet Oscar has it!"
Olive smiled. "Let's go."
"You want me to make a cactus for you? Really?"
Olive nodded firmly. "Really."
"You aren't afraid I'll turn the whole spaceship into a cactus?" It was a feeble attempt at a joke, and even Oscar didn't sound really amused when he added his obligatory nervous laugh. Olive and Otto exchanged an uncomfortable look.
"No, we aren't. We really need your help, and we trust you."
"And we're sorry we yelled at you earlier," Otto added.
"Oh…" Oscar waved his hand. "It's okay. I understand. I kind of messed everything up, heh."
"But now you're helping us make everything right again," Olive pointed out. "And, speaking of that…"
"Oh, right! One cactus, coming up, heh!" Oscar fired off the cactus-inator, and a small cactus in a clay pot appeared.
"Thanks, Oscar." Otto scooped it up carefully, avoiding the spiky spines, and they all took the items over to the flying saucer.
The alien leader thanked them, though the mechanic seemed a little disgruntled.
"We require another item which has been forgotten," he said when the engine had been assembled. "Fuel."
"Uh-oh," Olive said under her breath. Trying to sound calm, she asked, "And what do you use for fuel?"
"It is a liquid crushed from the edible pods yielded by certain plants."
Olive leaned in closer to Otto and Oscar and whispered frantically, "How are we going to find that in –" She checked her watch, four o'clock, "– two hours?"
"Wait…" Otto said slowly, "liquid… edible pods… from plants…" He smiled. "I don't think we need Baby Genius to figure this one out."
Ms. O (wearing a fluffy purple robe) and the three agents all waved as the flying saucer rose into the sky.
"Boy, am I glad that's over," Otto said. Oscar nodded vigorously in agreement, probably remembering the giant egg.
"Who would have known that alien spaceships run on juice?" Olive remarked.
"Yeah," Otto said through a wide yawn, "pretty cool."
"Good work, agents." Ms. O said. "And don't forget, work starts in four hours. Rest up." She smiled, and they all shared a look of dismay.
I'll be honest, the entire premise of this story was created to have an excuse to describe the characters in pajamas. Thanks for reading, and tell me what you thought!
