An angry mob had gathered beneath Shmumbermaid's magic flying transparent pirate ship. They'd moved on from throwing rocks and debris to bricks.

"WE HATE SHMUMBERMAID! WE HATE OSMU! WE HATE SHMUMBERMAID! WE HATE OSMU!"

OSMU was gathered around Shmumberman, who did his best to shelter them from the brickbats hurled at them.

Omar peered over the ship railing at the crowd below.

"What's wrong with them? Why are they doing that?"

Osmerelda shrugged. "Must be another new writer. They keep deciding they need to make everyone hate Shmumbermaid to make her more relatable."

Orla looked over. "Why would they think having everyone hate Shmumbermaid would make her more relatable?"

"Because they hate her. So they think everyone else should too."

Oswald looked worried. "Someone better do something! They'll be throwing bombs next!"

"Fear not!" Shmumbermaid strode across the deck of the semi-visible ship, bricks bouncing off her invulnerable body. "I have endured this before! And I have learned how to handle it!"

She strolled over to a lever mounted unobtrusively in a corner of the ship and pulled it.

A hatch under the ship opened, dumping a load of Shmumber Nummy Snack Cakes onto the crowd. They instantly threw away their bricks and torches and scrambled to collect the treats.

"SHMUMBER NUMMIES!"

"DELICIOUS, MOIST SPONGECAKE!"

"TASTY FRUIT FILLING!"

"ANYONE WHO GIVES US SHMUMBER NUMMIES IS OKAY IN OUR BOOK!" They all waved up at the ship. "THANKS, SHMUMBERMAID!"

Shmumbermaid smiled and waved back at the now happy crowd. "Another crisis averted!"

Oswald looked from the crowd to her, blinking. "I... What?"

Osmerelda smiled over at him. "It's from the ads."

"I KNOW IT'S FROM THE ADS! WHY ARE THEY DOING THE ADS? THEY'RE NOT CANON!"

Shmumbra turned to him. "No, they're real. They happened."

Oswald stared blankly. "They happened? They're canon?"

"Yes."

Brief pause while Oswald digested this. "So you're saying, you really did fight a weird guy with a camera who went around stealing national monuments and turning them into snoglobes?"

Osmerelda raised an eyebrow. "You fought a weird guy with a camera who went around turning national monuments into keychains."

Oswald straightened his shirt. "Well... Yeah. But I expect better from them."

Omar looked longingly at the snack cakes below. "Hey, can I get one of those Shmumber Nummy thingies?"

She tossed him a package. He tore it open and sampled the snack cakes.

"Hmm. Not bad."

Osmerelda, however, looked worried. Orla noticed and went over to her. "What troubles you?"

Osmerelda swallowed. "Well... When a new writer resorts to an 'Everyone Hates Shmumbermaid' plotline... It usually also means he's going to introduce..."

A voice thundered down from above them.

"SHMUMBERMAID!"

Osmerelda facepalmed. "One of those..."

They all looked up to see a foreboding figure high above them clad in jet-black armor studded with spikes, a ragged red cape hanging off his right shoulder. Glowing white eyes stared down from beneath the raised visor of his helmet.

"YES!" he thundered. "IT IS I! YOUR NEW ARCH-NEMESIS!"

Shmumbermaid looked at him and shook his head. "I've never seen this person before in my life."

"YOU WILL! YOU WILL SEE ME AND FEAR ME AND FALL BEFORE ME!" The face beneath the visor looked as though it were made of molten lava. "YOU WILL SOON LEARN TO DREAD THE NAME OF... KILLSLAUGHTER!"

He dove toward the ship.

#

"Feh. Fans. All the time with the fans asking all their questions about the stories..." The old man sipped his styrofoam cup of noodle soup. "I think I liked it better when the only people who cared about our books were little kids who'd eat the comics when they got done with them..."

Olympia, Otis, and Olive stood in one corner of the flashy office where the old man, his soup, and his crumpled, weathered, worn old business suit seemed decidedly out of place.

"Please, Mister Kamisky," Olympia pleaded. "This is very important. I know this is hard to believe but villains from the Shmumberman comics are invading our reality..."

"Of course I believe it," the old man named Kamisky shrugged. "Why shouldn't I believe it? It's happened before. I met the guy."

Otis blinked. "You've... met... What guy?"

"Shmumberman, of course." He took another sip of soup. "He was here a few years back when we did that 'Shmumberman of Two Worlds' story..." He scratched the back of his head. "Weird. Johnny was asking about it too. Sold pretty well from what I remember..."

Olympia and Otis exchanged looks. "Johnny? Who..."

Olive interrupted. "Can you tell us more about this story, Mister Kamisky?"

"Oh sure," Another slurp of soup. "Not much to tell, really. Some sort of cosmic plot contrivance thingie sent Shmumberman to our world, where nobody believed him when he tried to tell them who he was." More soup. "He eventually came here and we hadda help him get back home."

Otis leaned forward, pen and pad at the ready. "How'd you do that?"

Mister Kamisky shrugged. "We helped him build a dimensional transfer machine. Actually, he built it. We just hadda supply the parts." He drank more soup. "Took three copy machines, a television set, and one of my best electric typewriters. I mean, he reimbursed us, but still..."

Olympia perked up. "What happened to this machine?"

"Heh?" Mister Kamisky blinked. "Oh. The dimension transfer thing? We still got it." He rose stiffly from his chair and made his way across the room. "Darn. Circulation went out again. Anyway, we store the thing in this old closet. Sort of as a memento." He opened the door. "Gives the freelancers a thrill when they..."

They all looked inside. The closet was empty.

#

The balding middle aged man loomed over Otto. "I thought I raised my son better. He gets a nice suit, a nice haircut, and he runs around with strange girls solving mysteries..."

Otto was bewildered. "Sir, I..."

"I don't even know if it is a girl. It could be one of those... people..."

Olive, meanwhile, had two little kids climbing all over her while a fashionably dressed woman scribbled on a notepad.

"OLIVE!"

"OLIVE!"

"OLIVE!"

"OLIVE!"

"And I'm going to need you to stop off at the store on your way home..." She handed Olive a grocery list. "Make sure to get just these things. I expect the receipt and I expect change..."

And the Little O was struggling to get her badge-phone back from an old woman who kept turning away and blocking her.

"And you gotta use your photon torpedoes. Don't pretend you ain't got none, you just gotta get tough with them..."

"Ma'am, PLEASE!" Little O pleaded as the old woman pushed her back. "I need to talk to them!"

"Now don't you worry, baby!" The old woman patted Little O's head. "Your old Grandma, she knows what's what. She'll take care of everything. Don't you think none about it..."

"PEOPLE, PLEASE!" Olive finally shouted. "We need to get back to the case!"

"Oh, don't be silly, dear," the woman purporting to be Olive's mother sniffed. "Nobody cares about your silly old case. It's far more important to make it all about your need to learn proper behavior and responsibility. In this case, for example, you'll learn not to take your parents' hard work and sacrifices for granted and to be more a part of the family unit and to stop being so selfish and self-centered..."

One of the toddlers started venturing toward the street. Olive grabbed him and pulled him back. The woman didn't even notice.

"Such a rude girl, with a loud mouth and no respect," the balding man chimed in. "To think my son would associate with such a dirty creature..."

"Oughta get a rap in the mouth!" snapped the old lady.

The three agents exchanged hopeless looks.

Then, as if things couldn't get any worse, the ground started shaking.

Otto instinctively looked to Olive. "What's that?"

The three adults and the two little kids looked panic-stricken.

Little O searched her memory of old comics. "It could only be..."

There was a deafening roar. The adults all blanched.

A huge, brutish, half-human creature, eight feet tall and bright blue, rose out of the shadows and lurched toward them.

"PEOPLE LOUD!" He shouted at the group. "BEHEMOTH SLEEP! PEOPLE WAKE BEHEMOTH UP!" He swung a fist the size of pumpkin, smashing a hole in a brick wall. "PEOPLE GO AWAY! LEAVE BEHEMOTH ALONE!"

Little O nodded. "The Blue Behemoth..."

Not taking her eyes off the creature calling itself Behemoth, the woman quietly closed her notepad and put it back in her purse.

"Well, I'd better get going now..."

She fled. The two toddlers ran after her. "MAAAAAAAAAAAMA!"

The balding man started walking backwards. "I... have an appointment to keep..."

He fled too.

The old woman didn't mince words. "GAAAAAAAH!"

She shoved Little O out in front of her and ran away.

Little O grabbed her badge-phone back from her as she fled. "Well, that takes care of them!"

"Yeah," Otto rolled his eyes. "Really responsible, caring parents..."

Olive half-smiled. "You'd rather THEY try to handle..."

Behemoth roared again.

"...That?"

"BEHEMOTH SMASH!"

#

"The... Blue... Behemoth..." The red-robed villain sat in his hidden volcano lair, pressing his fingers against his forehead. "The Blue Behemoth..."He pounded his fists on the table in front of them. "THE BLUE BEHEMOTH? I almost had them, they were completely immobilized by my brilliant plan, but then THAT thing had to show up..." He sighed. "I never liked the Blue Behemoth anyway..."

Evil O responded through the phone, "What difference does it make? If he kills them, it'll all work out perfectly!"

"He WON'T kill them!" the villain shouted. "It NEVER works! Somehow, they always find some way out!"

He rose from his chair and stumbled across the room. "Drat. Circulation went out again... But... But... Where was I? But they WILL fall! Odd Squad will fall! Shmumberman will fall! The Shmumber Heroes will fall!"

Johnny Bailwick's rheumy eyes gleamed under his cowl. "And the Shmumberverse I created will perish... And punish those who never appreciated me..."

#

"Right. I'll take care of it." Olive closed her badge phone and rejoined Olympia and Oona in the lab. She looked around. "Where's Otis?"

"Otis? Oh," Olympia smiled nervously. "He's following up on a lead..."

Just then, Olympia's badge-phone rang. Olympia answered it. "Olympia ahoy! Who be this?"

Otis sighed in resignation at Olympia's antics. Then he got down to business. "You were right. I just checked with his daughter. Johnny Bailwick hasn't been seen for over a month."

Olympia swallowed. "Are you sure?"

"He wandered off from the nursing home he's been living in and nobody's been able to trace him since then. It's like he's disappeared off the face of the Earth."

Olive looked around. "Excuse me a moment..." She slipped off into the shadows...

#

"Yeah..." Otis nodded. "I'll meet you in the park after..." He looked around. The sky was inexplicably growing dark on a bright and sunny afternoon. "Okay, something's going on, I'll call you back..."

The area where Otis was standing was completely black by the time Otis hung up his badge-phone and clipped it back on his jacket. He looked around. He could hear someone moving in the woods around him.

"I hope you don't mind..." An unfamiliar voice purred. "I used my shadow ray to make it dark. I prefer hunting in the dark."

Otis smelled something, a distinct scent he remembered from childhood that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

"You're the baby duck boy, aren't you?"

Then Otis glimpsed her, a shapely woman in a dark, fur-covered costume wearing infra-red goggles and clawed gloves. She vanished almost instantly into the shadows.

"I'm known as The Raccoon. Raccoons eat little baby ducks."

Otis had broken out into a cold sweat. He did his best to stand his ground.

"But you remember that... Don't you?"

She leapt at him.

#

Olive returned to the lab. "Sorry. I had to... Now where's Olympia?"

Oona blinked. "Oh. She had to... go meet Otis!" She smiled nervously. "And Oscar's off talking to The Big O on the Long-Distance Talkinator Gadget!"

Olive nodded. "How interesting..."

There was a ping from the monitor on Oona's table. Oona turned to look at it.

"Oh, wow! The trackinator says the escaped villain from the Mirror Dimension is back in this universe!"

Olive feigned interest. "Does it now?"

Oona leaned close to the monitor.

"We've got to find this person and catch them!"

Olive had found Oona's sledge-hammer. She raised it over her head, creeping up on Oona.

"If we don't, the entire universe will collapse!"

Olive smiled. "Will it really?"

#

TO BE CONTINUED...