A/N So I realized while writing this chapter that when I wrote "Ships Ahoy", I conveniently forgot Dr. O was trapped in the giant juicebox during "No Ifs, Ands, or Robots" (which is when the Prologue of SA takes place) thanks to Oscarbot 10. And as far as we know, she should have still been trapped there at the moment I had her show up to tell Olive and Oscar about her relationship with Otto...
Sooooooooo whoops, continuity error!
Anyhow, like the rest of you, I'm SUPER EXCITED about the new episodes coming out next week! Unfortunately Dr. O will now no longer be a canon character once they are released, which kind of makes the rest of this fanfic irrelevant. But I've still got a great deal of her story to tell, so y'all just gotta remember it all takes place BEFORE "Dr. O: Party Time, Excellent".
(7) Chrysalism
\ˈkri-sə-ˌləs-zəm\ (noun) The amniotic tranquility of being indoors during a thunderstorm.
When Oscar made the decision to stop by Dr. O's office just before lunchtime on that particular morning, he should've expected an immediate "Happy Anniversary, Oscar," from his old friend.
But being who he was, it still caught him completely off guard. "Wait, wha—oh! Oh yeah, that's today," he mused, grasping his lapels and flashing her a bright grin. "Thanks, Doctor!"
Standing up from her desk, the doctor gaped at him incredulously.
Too late Oscar realized his mistake. Crumpets, that sounded really bad. "Ohwaitwaitnonono, I mean, heh, I didn't forget!" he hurriedly stammered. "What am I, crazy? I got her tickets to the next Bears volleyball game, and she got me a vintage yo-yo set, and we're taking each other out to eat at—"
"Slow down, Oscar!" she cut him off, holding out a hand to quiet him. "I didn't believe for a moment you would forget about August 4, I was only making sure."
"Ah, so you'd know that I didn't need Olive's help to remember," he said, catching on.
"No, I was making sure you got her a present, to see if you'd needed her to remind you about today or not."
Oscar blinked. "But...isn't that the same thing?"
Either Dr. O didn't hear or she preferred not to answer, but in any case she crossed in front of her desk, a file in hand, and was now rummaging around in her file cabinet. "How has your first year together been?" she asked after a moment, without turning to face him.
He took his usual seat on the metal chair by her desk and crossed his legs, a dreamy smile on his face. "Absolutely wonderful," he said, a highlights reel of happy memories playing in his mind's eye (courtesy of Reginald, the little man in his head, and his tiny slide projector). "I mean, to think it was only over a year ago things were tough between us, and now it's like we can't imagine ourselves without each other and wonder how things could've possibly gone bad in the first place, heh!"
"Have you been practicing your Cheese Wrestling lately?"
The sudden non sequitur of a question startled Oscar out of his reverie. "Huh? Um, yeah, this morning. A l-little, I mean. Why?"
Dr. O dropped in the file and shut the metal cabinet door. "Because I think there's still some traces of your last cheese fight lingering in your lab coat. Only those silly wrestling habits could've made you say something that cheesy."
If that had come from anyone else Oscar would've laughed, but as it was he knew his former partner had once treated an odd disease very similar to what she'd just described. "Hehe, whoops. I'll be sure to wash it out this afternoon, thank you Doctor."
"And thank y—"
"Although speaking of silly," Oscar went on, abruptly remembering why he'd come in here in the first place, "you never told me how the Minions movie went." He leaned forward and waggled an eyebrow. "Has Otto's Operation-Bring-Fun-to-Opal achieved its final success?"
It was Dr. O's turn to look startled, though it quickly turned into a sigh as she sank back into her chair. "Only two weeks since your Oscarbot turned me into a juicebox, and already you're pumping Otto for information about us?"
Oh, Opal, he thought with a chuckle, you have no idea. The thing is, it was the exact opposite that was actually true. Ever since that afternoon two weeks back, Oscar couldn't seem to get a solid hour to himself in the lab, thanks to all the interruptions from one Agent Otto. Anytime the rookie had a free moment, he'd be standing in the way of some experiment or gadget repair with yet another pointless question to ask. "Was the feud between you and Olive the reason she wouldn't let you come with us on the case where all the characters escaped their library books?" "When was the closest I ever came to finding out about you two before last Wednesday?" "Who else knows about you guys?" "Did you only volunteer to fight Odd Todd for the Flip-Floppernator because he made Olive a grownup?" "How many times did I leave you two alone together on cases and not realize you were, well, together?" And on and on he would go, until Oscar had to ask the closest nearby scientist to firmly escort Otto out of the lab. But once in awhile the Lab Director would glean a bit of information about how things were going with him and the doctor, at least from Otto's perspective. One of these things was the name of said operation. Otto had mentioned the movie being hilarious, and had alluded to other past "get-togethers". Oscar decided, however, that he wanted to hear the story from his longtime best friend.
"I would if that were possible, but I-I can barely get in a word of my own with all the information Otto's pumping out of me!" he jokingly protested. "Besides, I'd rather be pumping you for information, 'stead of picking up on some measly hint he drops here and there."
Dr. O rolled her eyes, but their shining twinkle gave away the rare adoration underneath her stoic facade. "To answer your question, I didn't think the Minions movie was quality film in the slightest."
Oscar felt his face fall slightly. Operation BFTO hadn't worked, after all? "Y-you didn't like it?"
"I didn't say that. I just didn't think the Minions movie was quality film." She lifted her chin and cracked a small smile. "That doesn't mean it wasn't funny."
Success! "So you liked it?"
"Yes. Well, mostly I liked the 60s pop culture references and stereotypes. But I thoroughly enjoyed observing Otto watch it."
Oscar laughed out loud at the thought of his friend examining Otto's guffaws with a professional medical eye, but then there was Opal for you. Ever the doctor, even when they'd been Academy trainees and Investigation partners. At times like these, Oscar was glad for his chats with her, now fewer and farther between with their work—and both their S.O.'s—taking up so much of their time. Always there to support him, through the highs of becoming a scientist and the lows of his misunderstanding with Olive, he still thought of her as a kind of older sister, and knew the feeling was mutual. And yet, Oscar reflected, once in awhile it'd be nice if we could actually have the time to—
His thoughts were interrupted by a sudden movement from Dr. O. "Wait," she muttered, intently focused on something through the window. "Do you hear that?"
Oscar swiveled his head around and strained his ears. "Hear what?"
Dr. O let go of the file cabinet handle and took a careful step forward, not taking her eyes off the glass. "Could you do me a favor and go down to check on Olive and Otto? They're at their desks."
He squinted at the two partners, seemingly in conversation with Ms. O. "Um, sure. What for?"
"No time to explain, just go!"
Bemused, Oscar obediently hauled open the door and dashed out to the stairs.
Which was when he learned that Olive, Otto, Ms. O, and eventually more than a dozen other agents had contracted an odd disease that he and his first partner had been forcibly immunized with over a decade and a half ago. Which meant they were the only two agents who could find the cure. Which meant, in a sort of reversal of déjà vu, they were going back out into the field to track down Jimmy Jinx.
And thus, Oscar's wish for more time with his best friend had been granted.
But by the end of the day, he was beginning to wish it hadn't been granted.
"I still can't believe they did that," Oscar grumbled, brushing a few stray Laser Chicken feathers and soot spots off the back hem of Dr. O's light turquoise lab coat. "I mean, when did I ever go out of my way to torture Olive?"
"Do I even need to say it?"
Oscar sighed. "My promotion doesn't count, you know that!"
"Yes, and that's why I was referring to the day our interview videos were filmed."
Oh… Catching her drift, Oscar recalled the day a boy nurse had come down from the Big Office to interview the squad's most prominent agents, as part of the promotional series from their Jackie win. The same day he'd prank-offered to take Olive on a date to a bakery with a sale on pies. Feeling an embarrassed fidget coming on, he stood up from his kneeling position and adjusted his glasses. "...Right, apart from that, heh."
"That's what I thought." Spinning Oscar around, Dr. O purposefully flicked a couple feathers off the back of his head and left shoulder. "But thank you for bringing up a good point. I'm a doctor, not a prankster who has ever gone out of my way to torture Otto."
Oscar shot her a glare.
Or at least, that's what he tried to do.
He really did.
But it was impossible for him to be angry at her, and his glare failed almost instantly as it collapsed into a burst of giggles. "Okay fine," he eventually managed, falling backward into a chair to catch his breath, "so Olive's gotten even with me, but you still gotta get even with Otto. Do I need to assist you with my super-incredibly-superior pranking skills?"
Dr. O smiled at him. "I've already decided to take him on the most boring get-together in all of Canada next weekend, when it's my turn to pick." Shrugging out of her sooty lab coat, she pulled out a fresh one from behind her back and tugged it on over her scrubs. "I figured a slow restaurant with mediocre food should do the trick."
"Ooh, diabolical, heh!" Oscar chortled, pulling out a Laundry-Transport-inator to zap the discarded coat and send it to the washing machines downstairs. Good thing I invented that gadget the other day, right on time after a two-day lag, he thought, shrugging out of his own lab coat to do the same. "Perfect for a boy who loves food and hates grownup-style dates."
"Ahem."
"R-right, get-togethers. Sorry, hehe!" he corrected himself. But Oscar wasn't sure he was really sorry. See, the past year with Olive had taught him a few things. Dates were what they were, anyone could see that—or at least, anyone who knew about the thing between Dr. O and Otto, which to Oscar's knowledge was only himself, Olive, and Ms. O. As funny as it was to see his old friend look away and pretend to busy herself organizing her desk just to disguise a tiny blush, it was high time she understand how normal the idea of dating someone was. Well, maybe it wasn't exactly normal for kids, but credit went to Olive for looking up all the couples in classic literature who were under the age of twelve. Scout and Dill, Tom Sawyer and Becky, Lyra and Will, Dickon and Mary...the list went on and on. Ms. O had even said it herself to Otto in the warehouse a couple weeks ago: "Oh, you don't even know the half of it. Just be thankful Odd Squad has never hired secretaries."
"Y'know, as humiliating as it was," Dr. O went on thoughtfully, changing the subject, "I'd quite forgotten how ineffective you and I used to be at solving cases together. Today was a good reminder of that."
Oscar chuckled. "Come to think of it, I can't believe we both thought we could work outside the office more." He leaned over and nudged her with a good-natured elbow. "Gives you new appreciation for being a doctor instead of a regular agent, eh?"
"Yes, because I'm a doctor, not a regular agent," she reminded him.
"But we were regular agents for awhile. Long enough to botch up a bunch of cases, like uh...oh oh oh! Like the one with that woman allergic to kids and we brought her straight to HQ where there are tons of kids?"
"Pfft!" went the doctor, betraying a glimpse of the merriment hiding below her surface. "Or the time when you zapped a kid with the Un-Crane-inator instead of the Un-Train-inator?"
Oscar half-winced at the hilarious yet cringey memory. "Or," he shot back, "like the case with the guy whose hair kept growing back into his head?"
That made Dr. O laugh out loud. "I didn't know we had a gadget for that!" she tried to protest. "I just thought he wasn't combing his hair enough! It was an odd medical condition I read about in that book The Secret Knowledge of Grownups!"
"And you didn't realize it was a fake odd disease in a fake book from a fake grownup?" he pretended to tut.
"We hadn't covered that in my training yet!"
On and on their so-called argument went, and by the end of day Oscar found himself feeling refreshed in a way he hadn't realized he'd been craving. Dr. O was even more right than she'd said aloud: today's reminder of how bad their old partnership had been was also a reminder of the good old days—back when Dr. O was just Opal, their social lives were simple, and their friendship was still budding. And even though nostalgia would never bring those good old days back, it was a blessed assurance to know the time, distance, and intervention of Olive and Otto (the latter of whom he had to thank for Dr. O's hilarious "sure isn't the left place" joke back at Baby Genius's place earlier today) had done nothing to change the Lab Director's bond with the Doctor. If anything, they had strengthened it.
Yes, as wonderful as it was to explore new horizons and share new adventures together with Olive, sometimes what Oscar really needed was to reconnect with his best friend.
