Olive heard him coming a mile away. She made sure everything was ready. All her work was done. She'd organized her pens, straightened the pile of dossiers on her desk, and made sure a refreshing pitcher of ice water was within arm's reach. The soda machine sat ready in one corner of their shared office in case he chose to have a drink too. She'd already told the assistants to hold all calls for the next hour or so.
He was coming up the steps.
"Bum-bah-dum-bah-dum-bum-bah-pah-dah-dah..."
She prepared herself emotionally and shook her head to get the cricks out of her neck. He appeared at the door.
"Yo! I'm back!"
Otto strutted in with the bag from the comics shop.
"Here we are! Latest issue of SHMUMBERMAN!" He pulled a comic out of the bag and tossed it to his partner. "Part Six of the 'Worlds In Collision' epic!"
Olive seized it. "Thanks! Oh, this book has gotten so GOOD lately!" She sipped her water and started reading.
"Yeah!" Otto produced his own copy of the same comic from the bag and sat down in his own chair at his desk, flipping through the pages. "I gotta admit, I had my doubts about this new writer but she..." He stopped at a page, staring. "Uh, Olive..."
"Ssh! I'm reading! Don't spoil the story for me!"
"Yeah. But, uh... Y'gotta turn to Page Sixteen!"
"Otto, I just told you, I don't want to spoil the story!"
"I know!" Otto insisted. "But this is really important!"
Olive sighed. "Fine." She started flipping through the pages. "But if you end up ruining any surprises for me..."
She found Page Sixteen, where Professor Straw was in her secret lab tied to a chair and covered with cobwebs. In the background, a multi-limbed hag in a silk dress crawled across the floor, waving clawed tentacles in the air.
"Great! She's been kidnapped by The Spider Witch! Darn it Otto, I've been waiting all month to find out why she didn't answer the emergency signal and now it..."
Otto: "Keep reading."
So she did. And she saw panels with The Spider Witch ransacking the lab, her spider-legs seizing equipment, ripping it from the walls, and tossing it aside. "Where is the Dimensional Transporter?" her word-balloon read. The one under it said, "Curse you, Straw, where did you hide it?"
The panel after that was a close-up of Professor Straw's face looking directly at the reader. Her thought bubble: "Olive... Otto... If you're reading this... Help! The entire Multiverse is in danger!"
Olive dropped the comic. She looked at Otto.
"What?"
#
Meanwhile in another Odd Squad headquarters, Oona was standing stock-still in her lab, arms at her sides, staring blankly into space. She didn't even react when Otis and Olympia strolled in.
"Hey Oona! We need a..." Olympia noticed her friend's vacant stare. "Oona?" She snapped her fingers in front of the scientist's face. No reaction. "Oona!"
Otis sighed. "Did she leave her wax statue sitting out again?"
"I don't think so..." She checked Oona's pulse. "And it's not an Oonabot! Something's really wrong!"
She seized the unresponsive girl and shook her. "OONA! OONA! WAKE UP!"
Looking around, Otis spotted a glass of water. He grabbed it and threw it in Oona's face. Oona shuddered, her eyes flickering, and came back to life, collapsing into Olympia's arms.
"Whuh... Wha..."
Olympia smiled. "Oona! You're okay!"
Oona sputtered and coughed. "What'd you do that for? Now my bowtie's all soggy! How'm I supposed to work with a soggy bowtie?"
Olympia helped her stand up again. "Oona, what happened? Why were you just standing there like that?"
"It looked like you were hypnotized," Otis added.
"I don't know!" Oona shook her head. "Last thing I remember, I was... Uh-oh..."
Otis put down the glass. "Uh-oh?"
Oona's expression changed to panic. "We gotta get to Baby Orson's office! Fast!"
"WHAT?"
"I'll explain on the way! Hurry!"
She ran out of the lab, followed by Olympia and Otis.
When they reached their boss's office, they found it being ransacked by a tall man in a tuxedo and opera cape, his top hat buckling under the low ceiling of the room.
"Baby bottles! Baby toys!" He smacked assorted purple plastic items off Mister O's desk and glared furiously at Orson, who glared back, unafraid. "What is this? Where's Ms. O?"
"Where you'll never find her!" shouted Olympia as she and Otis burst through the double-doors, gadgets drawn.
"So you might as well give up!" added Otis.
The tuxedo-clad intruder turned, revealing a bright green face, a mop of stringy gray hair, and pinwheel eyes. "Never!"
Olympia's jaw dropped. "The Hoodoo Hypnotist?"
Otis looked at her. "The WHAT?"
"The Hoodoo Hypnotist," Olympia explained. "He was an old Shmumberman villain. From the comics. It was the Sixties, they were going through a Camp phase..."
Otis coughed and she got back on topic.
"But he's just a comic book character! He can't be real!"
"Right," nodded Otis. "Which means this must be somebody dressed up as... the guy you said." He shook his head, muttering under his breath. "What kind of person goes around calling themself The Hoodoo Hypnotist?"
Oona hung back, staying out of the action.
"Of course!" Olympia nodded to her partner. "It's the only thing that makes sense!" She brandished her gadget. "He's probably just dressed up like that to confuse us!"
Oona looked at her friends nervously. "I... don't think so..."
"I'll bet he doesn't even have any real hypnotic powers!"
The Hoodoo Hypnotist gazed at the two agents, strange energies leaping and crackling about his pinwheel eyes.
"That, my dear, is a bet you would most certainly lose!"
He gestured hypnotically.
The agents froze. Their faces went blank and their arms dropped down to their sides. The gadgets they'd been holding fell to the floor.
"For while I may not have existed in your world before, I quite definitely do now! And my hypnotic powers work just as well here as they do in my own dimension!"
He walked past them toward Oona, who was cornered. She shrank back as he loomed over her. In the background, Agent Orson had quietly disappeared.
"And now," The Hoodoo Hypnotist seized Oona's wrist. "You are going to tell me where Ms. O is hiding!"
"Get bent!" Oona shouted back defiantly.
"You will tell me," he repeated, the pinwheels of his eyes spinning. "You are unable to resist my will..."
Oona struggled, trying to turn away, her eyes tightly shut.
He focused his gaze on her. "You are helpless against my power..."
Oona fought futilely, unable to escape. Her eyes slowly opened and her head turned to stare into his eyes.
"WHERE IS MS. O?"
"She... She's the Big O now..." Oona found herself saying against her will. "She's not here... Main office... Runs all Odd Squads..."
"Ah," The Hoodoo Hypnotist smiled coldly. "And where is this main office?"
Oona told him.
"Excellent!" He tossed Oona aside. She fell on the couch, dazed. He swirled his cape dramatically. "I shall go there and I shall avenge my humiliating defeat in SPECTACULAR SHMUMBERMAN #4! Then I shall..."
Suddenly, he blurred. His face contorted in shock as he faded away. Otis and Olympia snapped out of their trances immediately.
"Wha... What happened?" Olympia muttered, struggling to get her bearings.
Otis took several deep breaths. Then he saw. "Orson happened."
He nodded to the baby sitting on the floor just outside the office. The Dimensional Transportinator was sitting next to him.
Oona sighed. "He must've sent that goon back to wherever he came from!"
"Good job, sir!" Olympia beamed at her boss.
"So," Oona retrieved Orson and returned him to his highchair behind his desk. "I guess that wraps everything up!"
"Maybe," Otis said, picking up their dropped gadgets. "But we'd better warn the main office, just in case."
#
"Yes, sir! Right away, sir!"
The assistant at the main office finished talking to Otis and hung up. He was about to rush into the Little O's office when the phone rang again. Rolling his eyes, he answered it.
"Hello?" His face froze and he sat bolt upright in his chair. "Th-Th-THE Olive and Otto? Yes, of course! Right away!"
While he spoke to the two veteran agents, another assistant walked by with a bag from the comics shop. She entered the Little O's office and handed her the bag.
"Latest issue of SHMUMBERMAN, boss! Just came out!"
The Little O seized the comic. "Thanks! Oh, this book has gotten so GOOD lately! Shmumberman's evil twin The Shmumbernaught has Shmumberman trapped in a burning warehouse without his..."
"Don't tell me!" The assistant covered her ears and raced out of the room. "Don't tell me! Spoilers!"
"Sorry!" Little O called after her. Then she grabbed the comic.
"Okay, time for a quick break while I..."
She opened the comic and mist billowed out from the pages, a green glow suffusing the room.
"Huh?"
The mist, a sickly yellow, spun like a whirlwind around the desk, swirling down and taking a vaguely humanoid form.
"Sssssssssso..." the strange figure hissed. "Thisssssss isssss the other Earth! Sssssssssso ripe for conquesssssssst!"
The Little O stared in amazement. "Miss Mist? They brought HER back? That's really digging into the archives!"
"Yessssssssss!" Miss Mist rubbed her cloud hands together. "At lassssssst I have returned to wreak my vengeancccccccce upon Ssssssssssssssshmumberman! But firssssssst, I sssssssshall capture you, Msssssssss. O!"
"But I'm not..."
Before The Little O could finish her sentence, Miss Mist's cloud body enveloped her.
The assistant ran in. "Little O! We're getting reports of..."
He came in just in time to see the cloud, with the Little O inside, swirl back into the pages of the comic. The green glow faded.
"Oh..."
#
And in the OSMU van flying high over Salt Lake City, Omar was sorting through some envelopes.
"Hey guys!" he yelled to his partners. "Mail's in! Oswald, you got some sort of HUGE package..."
Oswald was suddenly there. "Can it be...? Could it be...? It is!" He leapt at the large box sitting amidst the pile of letters and started slicing through the packing tape on top with an old house key from his pocket. "IT'S HERE! IT'S HERE! IT'S HERE IT'S HERE IT'S HERE IT'S HERE! IT'S HERE!"
"Great!" Omar smiled. "What is it?"
"The Brand New Multi-Volume SHMUMBERMAN OMNIBUS!" Reaching into the box, he pulled out four large, bulky hardcover books and arranged them on the table. "THE complete and definitive collection of every important SHMUMBERMAN story from his humble beginnings as a back-up feature in FRUITY FUN COMICS to the classic Carlson Beck Silver Age adventures that established the character as we know him today to the Merv Weinhart Bronze Age epics to the complete Wendy Breise run that brought him into the New Millennium!"
"Cool!" Omar held up a comic. "And the new issue also came out today! Looks like it's going to be pretty Shmumbery around here for awhile!"
Orla entered from the hallway. "What is this 'Shmumberman' you speak of, my friends?"
"Only the greatest superhero ever!" Oswald replied. "He started out as a parody of American superhero comics. The Shmumbers people originally just intended for him to sell fruit juice. Then they hired Carlson Beck, who'd made a name for himself back during World War Two when American comics weren't available and Canadians had to create superheroes of their own. He completely revamped the character and made him a superstar!"
"Yeah," Osmerelda wandered in carrying a different comic. "He's alright, I guess." She held up her comic for Orla to see. "Me, I prefer Shmumbermaid!"
Orla frowned. "Shmumber...?"
"Shmumbermaid," Oswald explained dismissively. "Once they saw how well Shmumberman was doing, they made a spin-off comic, Shmumbermaid, for girls."
"It's not just for girls," Osmerelda insisted.
"Well, girls are the only ones who like it," Oswald sniffed disdainfully. "She was made up mainly to sell Shmumbers Milk and Dairy Products."
"It's really good!" Osmerelda insisted. "In this issue, Shmumbermaid teams up with the undersea heroine Shmumbra..."
"Created to push their dolphin safe tuna..." Oswald smirked.
"I'm sure all these heroes have their merits," Orla said, trying to head off an argument. "And they all have their own special qualities."
"Um, guys?" Omar interrupted. "Anyone else notice Osmerelda's comic is glowing?"
They all looked. The issue of Shmumbermaid Osmerelda was holding pulsed with a strange greenish light. She dropped it on the floor.
Oswald backed away. "What's going on?"
The light grew brighter and more intense, erupting from the comic and enveloping the entire van. All four agents were blinded by a bright flash that vanished as quickly as it appeared.
"What was that?"
"Agents!" Van Computer's voice came from the walls. "We are no longer over Salt Lake City!"
Oswald gasped. "WHAT?"
"In fact, we are now underwater!"
"WHAT?"
"Switching to submarine mode..."
The team ran to the cockpit, where they saw through the van windshield they were indeed underwater.
"We must be at the bottom of the ocean!" Osmerelda exclaimed, staring at the coral and the plant life visible all around the van. Fish swam past them as they descended deeper into the depths.
"Van Computer," Omar said, trying to sound reasonable. "What's going on?"
"We have passed through some sort of interdimensional barrier!" Van Computer responded. "It appears to have transported us to an alternate Earth!"
"An alternate Earth?" Oswald sat down, trying to wrap his head around what just happened. "Are you sure?"
Then they saw the mermaid swimming toward them.
"Oh yeah," Omar nodded. "That pretty much confirms it..."
The mermaid approached the van and stopped, pressing her hand against the windshield from outside. She looked in on them and they stared back at her.
She floated in the sea in front of them, her pink and white fish-tail coiling around her, translucent fins shimmering with rainbow colors. Her long, streaming hair also shone with rainbow light , fanning out and streaming around her in the water. Her face was round and delicately featured, with large blue eyes and dark blue lips. She wore glistening pearls and gleaming gold bangles, a bejeweled bikini top and filmy, transparent wraps that trailed around her arms and danced in the waves.
Osmerelda and Oswald said it together: "Shumbra?" Osmerelda was astonished, Oswald just confused.
Her mouth moved and they heard her voice simultaneously in their heads and in the air around them.
"ODD SQUAD MOBILE UNIT! YOU HAVE BEEN CHOSEN TO SAVE THE MULTIVERSE!"
#
TO BE CONTINUED...
