Shmumbra knelt in the wreckage of the burned building, conjuring water from her palms and washing the dust and the ashes from Orla's broken, lifeless body.

"I'm sorry," the mermaid heroine told the boys. "There's nothing we can do. I'm sorry."

Omar was standing there in shock. "But... But she... She can't..."

Oswald had quietly dissolved into tears.

"She will not be forgotten," Shmumberman assured them in his most heroic voice. "And her sacrifice will not be in vain."

Apparently, that was meant to comfort the two agents. It didn't.

"What are we gonna do without Orla?" Omar whispered.

Oswald shook his head, unable to answer.

The heroes were deliberately positioning themselves to keep the boys from seeing the worst of Orla's injuries. Omar understood but he still resented it a little. Oswald was too distraught to notice.

Then they heard a loud roar and saw a flash of light high above them.

"Shmumbermaid's crystal ship!" The speedster known as The Bullet exclaimed.

Barely able to focus, Omar looked up to see... mostly nothing. Sometimes, though, when the light was just right, he thought he glimpsed a huge, ornate pirate ship made from cut glass flying through the air piloted by a young woman in a bonnet and a colorful costume. Omar eventually recognized her from the comics as Shmumbermaid. Osmerelda was aboard too, having the time of her life.

The ship hovered in midair as a rope ladder lowered for Osmerelda to climb down.

"Hey guys!" she shouted cheerfully down at them. "What's going on? Where's Orla?"

"Osmerelda?" That roused Oswald from his stupor. He hurried over to intercept the young rookie agent before she caught sight of the gruesome scene in the debris. "Osmerelda!" He forced a smile. "Hey there! We're just, uh, regrouping and trying to figure out our next move..."

Chattering anxiously, he led Osmerelda in the other direction, away from the ruins.

Shmumbermaid, meanwhile, flew down from her ship to land in the debris by the others. "What happened here?"

A still shaken Omar semi-coherently told her about the Shmumbernaught battle and Orla's sacrifice.

"She was trying to protect me..." Omar kept saying. "I tried to stop her but you can't stop Orla when she makes up her mind... And... And she... She... It must've been so awful for her..."

Shmumbermaid hugged Omar sympathetically. "You did what you could, brave Omar. And fortunately, my precognitive powers told me to bring this!"

Reaching beneath her capelet, she produced a small, brightly colored device that looked like a cross between a spotlight and an old-fashioned movie projector.

"The Calcium Healing Ray!" Shmumberman exclaimed. "But... Can even it restore her?"

"It's our only chance!" Shmumbermaid put the Ray on the ground and went to work setting it up.

"Wait..." Omar watched, confused. "I... I thought you said she was..."

"The Magic Calcium Healing Ray developed by the Physician Monks of Shmumber-La can work miracles!" The Bullet told him. "It even once brought the entire Shmumber Star-Patrol back from the dead after a dastardly sneak poison gas attack by the malevolent Doctor Gruell!"

"True," Shmumbra said, positioning Orla's body. "But there are limits even to its power!" She sighed. "We can only hope we're not too late!"

Thoroughly bewildered but desperately hopeful, Omar watched as the Milkmaid of Might pointed the ray at his friend.

"Silence, please," Shmumbermaid told the others. "And try to maintain a supportive attitude. That tends to help."

Omar nodded and did his best.

She switched on the Ray. Orla's motionless body was enveloped by a milky white glow. Then she herself turned white, like a photographic negative. A cloud of soot dropped away from her and her burned, scarred flesh faded, blurred, and healed before Omar's eyes.

Orla's entire body shuddered, over and over again. Her mouth fell open. Another convulsion and a black cloud burst out of her mouth. Her broken bones knitted, her damaged body healed. A shadow seemed to sweep over her, head to toe, then back again.

Then she coughed.

And her eyes fluttered open.

"Omar?" she croaked. "I... feel quite parched..."

Omar emitted a strangled noise. "Oh my... She... She's BACK!"

"Lay still, please," Shmumbra supported her in her arms. She poured water from her palm into Orla's mouth. "You're still weak, your body is recovering. Lay still."

Presently, the Calcium Ray clicked off of its own accord. Orla struggled to her feet.

"Omar..." she muttered, still groggy. "Our mission..."

"It's fine," Omar assured her. "We found Shmumberman. I explained the whole thing to him."

Shmumberman nodded somberly. "Yes. And I shall do my best to help in this battle."

Omar smiled at the still disoriented Orla. "Boy! Oswald is gonna be so happy when he sees you!"

Just then, Oswald returned, Osmerelda hurrying ahead of him.

"But where is Orla?" She was demanding. "What's going on?"

Oswald coughed nervously. "Well, you see... About that..."

"I am here, good Osmerelda!" Orla proclaimed. "And feeling better with every passing second!"

Oswald froze in his tracks, staring at her, his mouth falling open.

"And you, friend Oswald!" Orla addressed him. "Have you succeeded in your assigned task?"

Oswald fainted.

Omar smiled nervously. "When he wakes up, he's gonna be so happy to see you..."

#

In another dimension, Oscar was pacing the floor of his office in a dither. "Oh, this is bad... This is really bad... This is really, really so bad..."

Oona came running in, tripping over her own feet as she stumbled to a stop.

"You called, boss?" She stood at attention, firing off a snappy salute.

Oscar returned the salute. "Kinda. I mean sorta. I mean... Look, I gotta tell SOMEone about this and I didn't know who else to call..."

He pressed a button on his desk. The entire top flipped over to reveal a complicated control panel replete with buttons and switches and monitor screens and lights.

"I was going over the dimensional monitors to make sure things weren't being too thrown off by all the people crossing back and forth with the Shmumberverse..."

"Are they?" Oona asked anxiously.

Oscar blew through his lips. "What? Oh, sure. The Shmumberverse is fine! I mean, it's mostly fine. I mean, the entire multiverse is gonna collapse if we don't get everything stabilized soon but we've still got a couple days before it gets REALLY bad and we should have everything back under control by then. So it's fine."

He scrolled past that data to a fresh page with a dozen or so gauges glowing bright red.

"But that's when I noticed the cosmic balance with the Mirror Universe is seriously out of whack!"

"The Mirror Universe?" Oona looked frightened. "That's the parallel dimension accessed through magic mirrors inhabited by our evil duplicates who look just like us but are our complete opposites in every way!"

"I know!" Oscar sighed. " Usually, the only way to cross into the Mirror Universe is to switch places with your counterpart, sending them here while you're there!" Oscar took a deep breath, then continued his exposition. "But somehow, someone from the Mirror Universe came over without switching places so both versions exist here simultaneously!"

"That's impossible!"

"That's what I thought too! But it happened! And it's thrown the delicate balance between dimensions completely out of whack! If we don't find the Mirror Counterpart soon, both worlds will turn into anti-matter and explode!"

Oona gasped.

"But who's the counterpart?"

"That's just it! I don't know!" Oscar flopped down in his desk chair, burying his head in his hands. "It could be anyone! I don't know what to do!" He stared into space. "When stuff like this happens, I usually tell Ms. O or Otto and Olive or somebody so they can fix it!" Long, drawn out sigh. "But Ms. O's out in space, Olive and Otto are off on a mission in the Shmumberverse... I don't know who to call!"

Oona sat down in another chair across from him. "Then that means... We're going to have to solve this case ourselves!"

Oona looked at Oscar. Oscar looked back at Oona.

"We're doomed, aren't we?"

"Pretty much, yes. But we hafta try."

#

Meanwhile, Otis and Olympia were in a public park questioning, in more ways than one, noted comics writer Amstead Heath.

"Ever since I have entered the comics field, I have tried to make comics fandom accessible for everyone, and while I might have occasionally fallen short, that has always been my goal."

Otis nodded. "That's nice. But you stepped on my foot."

"I noticed when I went to conventions a wide and diverse range of people and I strongly feel comics should reflect that diversity."

"I mean, I'm pretty sure you didn't break anything but it still hurts..."

"So I have struggled to bring a wider palette of characters of all races and colors and creeds to my stories and provide every reader with someone they can claim as their own."

Olympia squinted. "Wasn't your run on SHMUMBERMAID condemned by women readers as 'grotesquely misogynistic and borderline racist'?"

Amstead sniffed. "Oh, who cares what those heifers think? Chicks have no business reading comics anyway."

Quickly restraining Olympia, Otis took over the questioning.

"Uh, yeah. Didn't you write a story in..." He checked his notes. "...SHMUMBERMAN #332 where you visited Shmumber-Earth and teamed up with Shmumberman for an adventure?"

Amstead looked around nervously. "I... I didn't write that. It really happened." His face paled. "The evil wizard Tyronno brought me to his dimension with his magic and tried to force me to write a story where he destroyed Shmumberman and took over the world." He coughed. "Fortunately, I was able to resist his hypnotic powers."

"You weren't able to get Wi-Fi over there," Olympia clarified.

Amstead ignored her. "When I got back, the entire story was written, drawn, and out on the stands. I don't know how it happened. I wasn't gone that long."

Otis looked at Olympia. "Is it possible Tyronno is back and up to his old tricks?"

"Not quite..." said a sibilant voice behind them.

This was then followed by an enormous, brawny, hirsute man-beast smashing a park bench with a single blow. Olympia yelped and dodged out of the way.

"But you're getting far too close to be allowed to continue!"

The man-beast crept toward them.

Amstead Heath quickly arose and gathered his things.

"Well, I really must be going now..."

He fled just as a thin, elongated bestial-looking man coiled himself snakelike around Otis' leg.

#

And in another dimension, The Little O stood on Otto's shoulders, battering with her shoe the last of the nozzles from the pipe that had been spraying tomato bisque soup into the flying headquarters.

"There!" she exclaimed as the nozzle stopped spraying. "At least that'll keep any more soup from getting in!"

"Yeah," Otto, the tallest of the three agents stood up to his chin in warm tomato bisque. "But now what? We gotta get rid of this stuff!" He grimaced. "I don't know about you guys but this is REALLY making me need to use the bathroom!"

Olive, treading water, or soup, rolled her eyes.

Then Professor Straw burst in holding a device over her head.

"Guys! Guys! I've just finished the dimensional transporter!"

Otto lit up. "We can go home now!"

"No we can't!" insisted the Little O, still standing on Otto's shoulders. "We need to stay here, find OSMU, and help them in their mission!"

"But we can use this to get rid of the soup!" Swimming over, Olive took the device from Professor Straw. "So, how do you set the coordinates for this thing?"

#

And on Earth Odd, Todd was conducting a court-ordered class at his Home For Villains.

"All right, guys. You're... You're getting better..." Todd struggled to hold his encouraging smile. "Noisemaker, I'm going to need you to keep tempo better on that flute..."

"I don't know, Todd..." Noisemaker whined. "I still think I vould be better on ze kettle drums..."

Jamie Jam glared at him. "I got to the kettle drums first!" She stood behind the drums, a mallet in each hand. "So I'm playing kettle drums!"

"Vell, you don't play them very vell..." Noisemaker said into his beard.

"WHAT?"

"At least you guys got halfway decent instruments!" griped Mister Lightning adjusting his own instrument on his lap. "Lousy freaking tuba!"

"I'm sorry, Mister Lightning," Todd said through clenched teeth."I know you prefer the piano but it's still being repaired from our last rehearsal."

"Well, Tommy Twosie asked for it!" Lady Bread insisted, adjusting her harp on her shoulder.

"Um, Todd? My guitar's stuck to my sticky hands! It's stuck to my hands..."

"GUYS! GUYS!" Todd held up his hands. "Guys..." He forced a smile. "Let's get it together, okay? Evil Knight, help Sticky Sister Sally with her guitar. Noisemaker, you can have the kettle drums next time. Now come on. 'Man On The Flying Trapeze.' Ah-one and ah-two and..."

A tidal wave of tomato bisque dropped out of the sky, drenching them all.

Todd stood there, soaked, taking deep breaths. "Okay... Who's the wise guy?"

#

TO BE CONTINUED...