Sometime later, the agents were still sifting through their fan-mail.

"Hey, look! Someone drew a picture of us!" Omar held up the drawing for the others to admire.

"Cool!" Oswald smiled and nodded. "We'll have to put that up on the refrigerator door room!"

"This is most interesting..." Orla examined a mimeographed form. "It says we may have already won a prize."

Opal glanced at it. "That's junk mail. Just throw it away."

"If you say so..." Orla crumpled up the letter. "But what is this 'junk mail' you speak of?"

Agent Oyster popped out a door and struck a pose. "It's the Most! Unstoppable! Kind! Of! Mail!" Then he went back in again.

Opal went over and examined the door. "Does he live in there?"

Meanwhile, Oswald was trying to explain junk mail to Orla. "It's mostly unsolicited adverts for goods and services. There's also a few scams y'gotta watch out for..."

Orla nodded, understanding. "Ah. So that explains the repeated postcards beseeching me to purchase a cuckoo clock styled in tribute to the Looney Tunes cartoons..."

Omar perked up. "Wait! Do you still have any of those? I'll go halvsies with you..."

Returning to the table, Opal picked up another letter. "Here's something about someone wanting an ODD SQUAD comic book!"

"Yeah! I heard they were thinking about doing one!" Omar pondered. "Whatever happened with that?"

Oswald sighed. "I heard the Big O met with a bunch of comics people..."

They all looked up and slightly to one side to summon the flashback.

#

"Yeah, first thing, we're gonna hafta dump the kids..."

The Big O stared. "Excuse me, what?"

"Kids just don't sell. We'll age them up to teenagers."

"But Odd Squad is about kids solving odd problems."

"It's okay. We'll bump them up to teenagers but still have them act like kids."

"What do you mean act like kids?"

"You know, like kids: Rude, self-centered, incompetent, stupid..."

"Next!"

#

"First, we'll make the book appeal to young people by adding Blacks and girl characters..."

"We already have Black agents and girl agents."

"And we'll make them all Gay! It's the latest fad!"

"Wait. You think acknowledging the existence of Blacks, girls, and Gay people is a fad?"

"Sure! All the kids are doing it these days! Then in a few months, we'll phase them all out and go back to the real characters!"

"Next!"

#

"I know! We'll bring in the kids' parents..."

"We prefer not to discuss the agents' homelives..."

"And while the kids are solving odd problems the parents will monitor them and supervise them. Then we'll have them all go to lunch and talk about what great parents they are..."

"Uh, that takes the focus off the kids and takes away their independence."

"Yeah, but it emphasizes how great we are!"

"At the expense of the kids the book's supposed to be about!"

"Well, yes, but who cares about that?"

"Next!"

#

"First thing we do is get rid of all of those awful guuurl characters and lame 'People of Color' agents those stupid Social Justice Warrior writers added. I mean, who'd want to read about them?"

"Girls and People of Color?"

"Exactly! And we don't want them reading comics! We want to appeal to OUR audience: Emotionally stunted middle-aged white guys who don't get out much."

"Next!"

#

"Then in the third issue, we do the big reveal and bring in The Overseers."

"The who?"

"The Overseers. They're the adults who secretly run and control Odd Squad and have been behind everything from the start..."

"No. Odd Squad is run entirely by kids."

"Ah, but that's just what they want you to think! But really, that's just silly. So we'll reveal it's all a hoax to trick the kids into thinking they're fighting Odd when they're really capturing chaos energy to summon the Elder Gods..."

"Next!"

#

"So, Ms. O is really a vampire..."

"STOP! Why do you all keep doing this? Why do you keep trying to turn it into a completely different show, and a less original one at that? Why can't you just write stories about the characters?"

"But... That wouldn't be about US. The important thing is to make it all about us to show how wonderful we are!"

"Well, why don't you show how wonderful you are by writing good stories?"

"That's too hard. We'd rather do this instead. So anyway, there's a portal to the Hell Dimension under Odd Squad headquarters..."

#

Oswald shook his head. "It didn't go so well..." Then, under his breath, "And yep, this guy's gonna ride this hobby horse of his straight off the cliff..."

Silence for the next few seconds. Then Omar piped up.

"I know! We can all play Truth or Dare!"

The others stared at him. He cleared his throat.

"It was just a suggestion..."

Opal plunged back into the mail-stacks. "There's got to be something in here we can use!" She opened and glanced at letter after letter. "How about if we fight a villain?"

"We do that on the show."

"Battle our evil counterparts?"

"Too cliche."

"Find a magic lamp that grants wishes?"

"Seriously?"

"Turn into babies?"

"No. Way!" Oswald insisted forcefully. "I've had enough creepy humiliation already!"

"Fall in love?"

They all looked doubtfully at each other.

"Go horseback riding?"

"I'm allergic to horses," Omar deadpanned

"Bake cookies?"

Oswald perked up. "What kind of cookies?"

Orla shook her head. "We cannot create excitement out of that."

"That depends on the cookies!" Oswald insisted. They quietly ignored him.

"But we have to do something! We can't just give up!"

Orla sighed. "I understand your feelings. But this story has rambled so long it's completely lost its original purpose."

"Yeah," Omar agreed. "And I think he wants to move on to do another story. He's already got an idea..."

"And it's a REALLY dumb idea," Oswald shook his head. "But he promised I wouldn't be naked in this one so that's a good thing..."

Omar pondered. "I wonder if he'll use that as a selling point..."

Oswald glared at him. He didn't notice.

"We can't give up!" Opal insisted. "We need a really great ending!"

"I am not laughing hysterically for five minutes for no reason," Oswald replied. "It didn't work on the show and it won't work here."

"And this is a print medium," Omar explained. "There's no way to actually do it."

"Really? Let us investigate." Orla laughed for several minutes. Then she checked. "Yes, you are right. It does fall rather flat in print."

Omar shook his head. "Didn't he even have an ending in mind when he started this thing?"

"I think he went past it," Oswald grimaced.

"But we can't just let it sputter out like this!" Opal pounded the table.

Oswald sighed. "Look. We've had a good run. Some folks read it, it got a write-up in TV TROPES, it's lasted twenty chapters. We need to stop."

"But we can't! Remember the old saying, it's not over until the fat lady sings!"

At that point, the monitor dropped from the ceiling. "AGENTS! YOU HAVE AN INCOMING CALL FROM... 'THE IDIOT WRITING THIS THING?'"

A black and white image appeared on the monitor screens, old film footage of an overweight woman standing before a microphone."

"When the moooon comes oooover the mountain..."

"Blech!" Omar made a face. "What's that?"

"MY DATA BANKS TELL ME IT IS KATE SMITH, A SINGING STAR WHO HAD A POPULAR RADIO PROGRAM IN THE 1930'S."

"The 1930's?" Opal stared at the screen. "That's almost a century ago!"

"And it sounds like it!" Oswald sulked. "Now do you see why I don't like this guy? I mean, who does he think is reading this? Could he maybe reference something within our actual lifetimes?"

"It is within my lifetime," Orla rejoined. "And I find it rather soothing."

Omar gaped in disbelief. "You LIKE that? Why?"

Oswald sniffed. "She was watching Lawrence Welk earlier."

"Yeah, I don't know who that is..."

The agents argued as the van sailed high above the clouds.

And in her office, the Big O sipped her juice box. "I tried to warn them..."

#

END