"Your gadgets will be mine, human whelp," Barrabas the evil Bigfoot growled in a voice like a bear roaring. "I shall conquer the hidden Sasquatch City! And your grotesque failed experiment of a species will be restored to its proper place... at the bottom of the food chain!"

Oscar hung from the creature's enormous, hairy paw, its claws digging into his scalp as it held him by the top of his head. His glasses were crooked and his toes barely touched the floor.

O'Malley stood a few feet away, paralyzed with fear. The beast looked over at the little tube operator, its nostrils flaring. He snorted.

"YAAAAAAAAAAAH!" O'Malley fled.

Then Octavia wandered in. "Hey, Oscar!" She waved, not really looking at him. "Great to see you again! Just gotta get these requisition forms." She collected some papers from Otto's desk. "Hey, would you know where Otto and Olive are?"

"Uh..." Oscar struggled as the Bigfoot's grip tightened around his skull. "They're kinda out of the office right now on an important mission..."

"Oh. Do you know when they'll be back?"

"Not really, no. And I'm kinda in the middle of something, so..."

"Oh, okay!" She headed back out the door. "I'll come back later then. Bye!"

She was halfway down the steps when it hit her. "WAIT a minute..."

#

"You said you had her," the stunted little man with the overbite and the cheap prom tux clutched his teddy bear to his chest. "You said you had her."

"We thought we did," The Hoodoo Hypnotist ushered him into his secret castle headquarters. "We were mistaken. Miss Mist grabbed the wrong person."

The little man squinted, then looked down at the bear. "What?" He held the bear up to his ear and stood for a moment, listening. "Mister Brian wants to know what you did with the person you grabbed."

"Miss Mist is guarding her in the next room," the malevolent mesmerist explained. "We're waiting for her to wake up so we can question her." He pondered. "It's very strange. She should have recovered from Miss Mist's sleeping gas by now..."

The little man held the bear to his ear again. "Mister Brian says she's probably faking."

The Hypnotist grimaced. "No matter, Brice! Even if she is, there is no way she can escape my tower safehold! Especially not with Miss Mist guarding her! She will..."

"HYPNOTISSSSSSSSST!" Miss Mist shouted from the other side of the locked door. They heard something crash. "SSSSSSSHE'S AWAKE! AND SSSSSSHE HASSSSSS A... NO! NO! NOT A HANDHELD ELECTRIC FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN..."

Puffs of sickly yellow smoke billowed from under the door.

"Blast!" Seizing the edges of his cape, the Hoodoo Hypnotist ran to unlock the door.

Brice stood, bewildered. Then he put the bear to his ear.

"What? Oh. Oh, yeah."

Drawing a gun from a holster concealed under his suit coat, Brice ran after the Hypnotist into the room.

There they found thick yellow fog and a smashed window.

"Miss Mist!" The Hypnotist shouted at the fog. "Pull yourself together!"

"I'M TRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYING..."

The fog swirled around the floor.

Brice ran past them to the window, where he shot in vain at the white hang-glider disappearing into the sky.

#

Meanwhile, Otto and Olive were busy putting Professor Straw's lab to rights.

"I should have no trouble building another dimensional transporter to send you both home," Professor Straw assured them. "The only problem is securing enough Shmumbertonium to power it. Every ounce of Shmumbertonium is kept closely guarded due to its harmful effects on Shmumberman."

"Yeah," Olive nodded. "It's like Kryptonite to Superman."

Professor Straw blinked. "Like who to what now?"

Olive sighed and collected the remnants of the busted chair to put in the garbage.

Otto's badge phone rang. He answered it.

"O-T-T-O!"

There was a brief pause. Then a tiny, hesitant voice. "Otto... You're... THE Otto... Who's partners with Olive? That Otto?"

"Um, yeah... Who's this?"

Another brief pause. "I'll be star struck later. This is The Little O."

Now it was Otto's turn to be stunned. "The Little O?"

"Some villains kidnapped me and brought me here," she explained. "From what I overheard, they were after the Big O and got me by mistake. I escaped and set my badge-phone to call the nearest Odd Squad agent."

"Really?" Otto looked around. "Where are you?"

"I'm not sure. I just escaped from a castle. Uh-oh! Looks like I'm about to run into some trouble! Gotta go!"

"Little O! Wait! We..."

There was a click as Little O hung up. Otto hurried to tell Olive what he'd just learned.

And nearby, the Little O braced herself as a bizarre, multi-colored figure with huge wings and a scaled tail swooped down toward her hang glider.

"Thought you were pretty clever, didn't you, missy?" the strange, winged, feathered man with the beaked helmet shrieked. "Yet for all your effort, you are merely prey for... The Archaeopteryx!"

Razor-sharp talons sprang from his boots.

#

And some distance away, far beneath the sea...

"Oh, my pretty little goldfish!" Catfish gloated. "You will never be able to stop me and my minions!"

"Wishful thinking, sea pirate!" Shmumbra the mermaid heroine shouted back telepathically. "My water-weaving spells will thwart your evil plans!"

Sadly, though, the villain called Catfish was right. Shmumbra fought heroically and her powers were mighty but there were just too many of Catfish's robot drone ships. They never tired and they never gave up; every time she knocked a bunch of them away, they simply regrouped and rejoined the battle. She was on the verge of being overwhelmed.

"At least I can keep these criminals away from OSMU!" the super-siren thought to herself. "I must, for the fate of the Multiverse depends upon it!"

She glanced back. The OSMU van, converted to submarine mode, had retreated a safe distance but it was still vulnerable to attack. She was determined to protect it.

Before she could, however, a concussive energy blast ceased her skull. She faltered, almost lost consciousness, and struggled to regain her focus as the evil ships closed in.

"At last!" Catfish crowed. "This is my chance to finish her off!"

Before he could complete his attack, however, two small blue and black figures swam to her defense.

"What?" the villain punched at the control panel of his ship with his steel claws. "Who are these intelopers?"

"Never mind who we are, you absurdly clad miscreant!" Orla shouted through her radio hookup. "Look instead to your robot underlings!"

She activated a gadget and swung it back and forth, sweeping a ray across all the drone ships. They immediately sputtered and short-circuited, going dark and floating inert in the water.

"No! No!" Catfish raged as his robot catspaws went dead. "I almost had her!" His eyes narrowed as he focused on Orla. "You will pay for that, child!"

"Nah, I don't think so!" Osmerelda swam up from nowhere, zapping Catfish's ship with another gadget. The water around the ship froze solid into a chunk of ice and sank slowly into the depths of the sea.

"That oughta get him outta our way for awhile!"

"Thank you!" A still-dazed Shmumbra told the two. "I am grateful for your help. But there is much we must discuss. Please return to your ship and follow me to the Shmumber Sanctum. This way!"

She undulated past them, underwater light reflecting rainbow prisms on her scales. Osmerelda and Orla swam back to the van.

Inside, Omar and Oswald were watching the action through the windshield.

"Hey, why don't we ever do cool stuff like that?"

"Because we're not insane."

"Good point."

They grabbed towels and juice boxes and hurried to meet the girls when they re-entered.

#

"A cult? Oh yes. The Vita per Fructum," Humber Shmumber made a face. "We... don't really talk about that too much. Makes the family look bad, y'know, and tarnishes the company image..."

"We understand, Mister Shmumber," Otis told him as he and Olympia followed him down a less-traveled hallway of The Shmumber Archives. "But we're investigating a case."

"Anything you say will be kept strictly confidential," Olympia assured him.

Humber sighed. "Yes, well... Yes, there was a cult and my great-uncle Cumberland Shmumber was heavily involved in it as a child. In fact, he was their intended messiah."

That stopped both agents dead. "WHAT?"

"I thought that'd get you. Here's a photo of him at the time."

Humber pointed to an old, framed photograph of a reedy little boy with a shaved head wearing saffron robes and seated in the Lotus position in an apple orchard. He was surrounded by flower garlands and fawning admirers and looked quietly confused.

Humber continued: "Cumber's mother passed away shortly after he was born. His father became devoted to Eastern mysticism, Spiritualist dogma and health fads. It was sort of trendy at the time, but he got really deep into it."

"Clearly," Otis said, staring at the creased, faded photo.

"After hooking up with a Mrs. Evelyn Peters, a widowed trance medium and self-proclaimed nutrition expert, Cumber's father founded the Vita per Fructum, or Life Through Fruit, with some friends. They did pretty well; like I said, it was trendy at the time. My great-grandfather Gunnar Shmumber was in charge of the company at the time. He didn't join the group or believe in their practices but he allowed the group to use the country house as their meeting place. He forbade them from forming a commune there, though. Felt that'd be going too far. "

Otis nodded. "Any pictures of Cumberland's father or this Mrs. Peters?"

Humber led them farther down the hall and pointed to a couple more pictures. One showed a stout man with a handlebar mustache and a bandaged foot.

"That's the father. We don't really know much about him. We're pretty sure his name was Reginald but he tried to stay out of the spotlight. He was usually referred to as The Colonel, even by Cumberland. He started on the health kick to try to cure his gout and eventually became obsessed."

In the picture, he was standing next to a seated woman with long, braided hair and spectacles.

"And that's Evelyn Peters. She was a noted anti-suffragist, anti-vivisectionist, anti-Semite and anti-Papist, among other things. And like I said, she considered herself a Spiritualist medium."

He pointed to another picture, this one showing Mrs. Peters with a blurry white, out of focus figure resembling a small girl with a feathered headdress.

"That's a spirit photograph showing her with her spirit guide Dancing Deer. She was supposed to be the ghost of a young Cherokee girl who drowned three hundred years before the Pilgrims came."

Olympia peered at the photo, adjusting her glasses. "Whaaa..."

Humber sighed. "Yeah. They were also fans of Spirit Photography. We've got whole scrapbooks full of the fake photos they spent hundreds of dollars on. People didn't really understand about double exposures back then." He shook his head. "We've also got a recording of her channeling Dancing Deer at a seance." He winced. "Please don't ask to hear it. It's way too embarrassing. My grandfather said she sounded like Baby Snooks doing Tarzan. No idea what that means but I'll take his word for it."

"And Cumberland grew up in the middle of all this," Otis nodded sympathetically. "Poor kid."

Olympia looked over. "Did they really believe this stuff?"

"We're not really sure. Some people think Mrs. Peters was a con artist after the family money. But she and the Colonel never married, thank heavens. They don't even seem to have been romantically involved."

Olympia sniffed. "Well, I guess that's one good thing for poor Cumberland..."

"And for us," Otis looked at the first picture again and grimaced. "I don't need that picture in my head."

"Yeah," Humber continued. "But then one day Dancing Dear delivered a great revelation: Cumberland was destined to become their Messiah and lead humanity to a global spiritual renaissance and peace on Earth."

"Through fruit juice." Otis raised an eyebrow.

"Cumberland was four at the time. They hired a brace of private tutors and started him on a health regimen involving daily fruit juice baths, yoga, intensive fitness training, and a strict vegetarian diet."

"Wow."

"Then when he turned twelve, they installed him as Grand Magistrate of the Vita per Fructum. His word, by decree of Dancing Deer, was Absolute Law." Humber shrugged. "Some people think Mrs. Peters' plan was to use him as a pawn and rule through him."

Olympia gulped. "Did she?"

Humber grinned. "Nope. Once he took power, Cumberland immediately dissolved the group. Then he went to live with his grandparents and joined Little League."

Humber pointed to a picture of the reedy kid, a few years older with his hair starting to grow back, in a baseball uniform.

"Good for him!" Olympia cheered.

"How did the Colonel and Mrs. Peters take it?" the ever-pragmatic Otis asked.

Humber shrugged. "I doubt they liked it very much. But like I said, Cumberland's word was law. Even if they were faking, they couldn't go back on the prophecy. The Colonel went on a pilgrimage to Tibet and died in an avalanche. Mrs. Peters went on the lecture circuit with her bulldog Trollo, who she claimed could speak English and paint Expressionist art."

Olympia blinked. "Could he?"

"Apparently, you had to listen really hard to make it out. Mrs. Peters was generally the only one who could decipher it. She tried to teach him Morse code but he never got the hang of it."

Humber then led him to a framed abstract painting.

"And here's one of his works."

Olympia and Otis stared at it, tilting their heads this way and that. "Uh... Interesting..."

"Cumberland had a fairly normal life after that and eventually took over the family business after his grandfather died. But it's thought his early life and maybe some residual guilt over what happened influenced his decision to create Shmumberman."

"A fruit-juice powered hero to save the world..." Olympia nodded, wide-eyed.

Finally, Humber led them to some comics pages. "Here's some artwork from the early stories he did with the artist he hired, Johnny Bailwick."

Olympia studied the pages. Otis turned the page on his notepad. "What can you tell us about Johnny Bailwick?"

#

Back in Otto and Olive's office, Oscar was still helpless in the grip of the monstrous Bigfoot Barrabas.

"Slowly I crush your tiny, fragile head, you wriggling worm. I enjoy watching your pain."

Then Oscar's badge phone rang. He answered it.

"Yello!" Brief pause. Then he handed the phone to Barrabas. "It's for you."

"Eh?" Sniffing suspiciously, Barrabas took the phone, tiny in his oversized hands, and put it to his ear.

A blast of ultra-sonic sound immediately knocked him unconscious.

Barrabas collapsed on the carpeted floor. After adjusting his glasses, Oscar retrieved his phone.

"Thanks, Octavia!"

Downstairs, Octavia handed the sonicblastinator back to Ophelia. "No problem, Oscar! Any time!"

Then an enormous, glowing red axe smashed the table next to them in two. A hirsute, muscular man in Midevial executioner's garb raised the axe to strike again.

"Quickly, my servile Savage!" a beautiful blonde woman in a skimpy costume posed nearby. "Dispatch yon maidens forthwith!"

The muscle-man grunted. "At once, Seductra, my love!"

The woman he called Seductra sniffed disdainfully. "Spare me your insipid endearments, clod, and get on with it!"

Octavia spoke into the phone. "Oscar, I'll have to get back to you..."

#

TO BE CONTINUED...