"Meddlesome bratsssssssssss..." the strange beast-man hissed as he wrapped his serpentine body around Otis. "You shall perishhhhhhh..."

"Destroy him, Worm!" The larger, hairier beast-man advanced on Olympia. "I'll go after the girl!"

The beast-man called Worm looked over his shoulder at his partner. "You alwayssssssss do, Butcher!"

Olympia paused and frowned, a sour look on her face. "Butcher. And Worm. Butcher and Worm." She held up her hands. "Okay, look. I know this isn't one of those stories where we break the Fourth Wall. And I'm not one of the characters who do it that much anyway. But... SERIOUSLY?"

Otis refused to react to that, instead concentrating on struggling to escape the Worm's tightening grip. "I don't suppose we can expect any help from Armstead Heath..."

In the distance, they heard the comics writer still running away, screaming in terror.

"No..." Olympia shook her head. "No, I suppose not..."

#

And on a parallel Earth in another dimension...

"So you don't remember ANYTHING about being dead?"

"I was not dead. I was unconscious," Orla insisted yet again. She indicated the various Shmumber heroes gathered around them on the flying transparent pirate ship. "Their strange ray device healed my wounds and I recovered."

"But... They said you were..."

"I. WAS. NOT. DEAD."

Shmumbra placed a gentle, restraining hand on Oswald's shoulder before he could ask again.

"Let it be, friend Oswald," she told him, smiling. "People brought back by the Calcium Healing Ray rarely have memories of crossing over and most prefer not to talk about it."

"True," Orla said succinctly. "I do not wish to discuss it."

"But..."

"And if you ask one more time, I shall be sorely tempted to allow you to experience death firsthand. So don't."

Oswald shut up.

Osmerelda, meanwhile, was ecstatic. "Oh man, we're on Shmumbermaid's flying crystal ship! For real! It's just like the comics, only with better art!"

Omar was a bit puzzled. "Why do you need a magic ship when you can fly?"

Shmumbermaid shrugged. "Why do you need a van when you can walk?"

Omar shrugged. "Touche."

"Look!" The speedster superhero called The Bullet pointed to a building. "There's the Jericho Tower, Blighted City's most recognizable landmark. At nearly one hundred and thirty stories, it's considered the tallest building in the world!"

"On your world, maybe!" Oswald scoffed. "On our world, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates is currently the tallest building at one hundred and sixty-three stories! That's almost twice the size of the Empire State Building!"

The Bullet reddened. "I meant in this country."

"Oh," Oswald nodded. "Well, in Toronto, we have the CN Tower, which is one hundred and forty-seven stories..."

The Bullet's eyes narrowed into slits. "Did you know the Cheetah is the world's fastest land animal?"

Oswald bounced on his heels. "I did, actually."

"The second-fastest is the pronghorn antelope, which can sustain its full speed longer than the cheetah."

Oswald squared his shoulders. "Several birds, however, are known to fly faster than the cheetah or the pronghorn antelope."

The Bullet glared at him. "Who's the fastest bird?"

"Peregrine falcon." Oswald smirked.

"But that's only diving speed..." rejoined The Bullet.

Omar sidled over to Shmumbra and whispered to her, "Does he often do that?"

"The Bullet?" She nodded. "He has a fondness for reciting obscure facts and trivia during the course of his adventures. He calls them his Bullet Points."

"Oswald does that a lot too," Omar mused. "He hasn't come up with a name for it yet." He paused a moment. "We've come up with names for it but we can't really say them out loud..."

"Hark!" Orla held up her hand, then pointed. "I believe we have discovered your comrade, the one you have referred to as Doctor Darkendire!"

She pointed to a rooftop battle dimly visible through the fog that habitually engulfed the city.

"Such dense mist!" Orla exclaimed. "I have not encountered its like since many autumns ago in the land of Honah Lee."

Oswald's head snapped around. "Honah Lee?"

"It was before I became guardian of the Forty-Four Leaf Clover," she explained. "My old partner and I journeyed there to help a dragon overcome his abandonment issues."

Oswald chewed that one over as the ship descended through the clouds to hover over a fierce battle between a tall man in a jet black costume with a long, billowing cape and a group of thugs being watched by an older-looking fellow in eccentric formal attire leaning on a wooden stick.

"You made one mistake, Crooked Man!" shouted the caped man. "You got overconfident! And that led me right to your door!"

"Oh, Darkendire," The Crooked Man purred, adjusting his stovepipe hat, which was bent in the middle at a right angle. "Silly crimefighter. I wanted to bring you here. Now my crooked crooks will finish you off once and for all!"

And the crooked crooks were certainly trying. There were a dozen or so of them, armed with bent pipes and twisted wrenches, all attacking Doctor Darkendire from every side. He fought back ferociously, a tornado of violence, his cape swirling but somehow not tangling around him as he leapt and spun. A row of metal claws jutting from the rings he wore on his hands tore vicious wounds the crooks' skin as they staggered and fell.

"Wow..." gasped Omar.

Orla looked at the other heroes. "Should we not help him?"

"He'd never forgive us if we did," Shmumberman answered. "He prefers to handle these things alone."

"Blighted City is his territory," added Shmumbermaid. "We maintain a strictly hands-off policy."

"He insists on it," piped up Oswald. "I read about it in the comics. Doctor Darkendire is really Jonathan Jericho, head of Jericho Industries and a wealthy financier. When he was a kid, his parents were brutally murdered by gangsters. He was rescued and taken in by a humble farm family who were then also brutally murdered by gangsters. His elderly, sickly aunt took him in and raised him as best she could until she was brutally murdered by gangsters. So he ran away and joined a circus and traveled with them as an acrobat until they were all brutally murdered by gangsters. He escaped and lived in the wild with great apes until they were brutally murdered by gangsters. After that, he journeyed to the farthest reaches of Tibet and studied with wise and ancient llamas until they were all brutally murdered by gangsters. Oh, and his dog got run over. So he has issues."

Orla nodded. "I... yes."

"Hold that thought," Shmumberman told the others. "I believe I've just spotted something with my Shmumber Vision!"

He leapt from the deck of the transparent ship, flying down past the building where Doctor Darkendire battled his enemies. As he soared down, he took a small box of Shmumbers Fruit Juice from his costume, inserted a straw, and quickly drank it dry, discarding the cardboard box, which plummeted to Earth to land neatly in a trash bin.

"For extra protection! I shall need all my Shmumber power for this next Shmumber stunt!"

Scanning the streets with their telescopinators, the agents finally spotted Shmumberman's target, a ghoulish looking figure in a black and grey harlequin costume aiming a mortar covered with swirling designs, wacky sayings and whimsical kitty stickers at a school bus filled with unsuspecting children.

"HEE-HEE-HOO!" He cackled. "Whilst my tiresome old nemesis Doctor Darkendire is preoccupied, I'll seize the opportunity to play a few pranks on the unsuspecting citizens of Blighted City!"

He fired at the bus.

Swooping down, Shmumberman blocked the mortar fire, the shell exploding harmlessly against his invulnerable chest.

"Shmumberman!" The clownish criminal exclaimed. "Curse the luck! What are you doing in Blighted City?"

"At the moment, stopping you!"

"That's Killjoy the Black Harlequin!" Oswald told the others. "One of Doctor Darkendire's most dangerous enemies!" Oswald coughed. "I have his twelve issue mini-series and his poseable limited edition figurine!"

"What happened to you, Killjoy?" Shmumberman asked the wicked harlequin as he crushed the mortar with his bare hands. "You used to craft such intricate and elaborate schemes. Now you just run around randomly killing people. What gives?"

"Gotta go with the flow, Shmumbie!" The killer clown flashed a toothy smile. "More violent crimes for more violent times! It keeps sales up!" The villain produced a knife and tried to slash one of the juice tubes on Shmumberman's costume. The hero quickly blocked, then disarmed him. "Drat it!" Killjoy then smiled viciously. "Still, my fun and games aren't over yet!"

Shmumberman frowned. "What do you mean?"

The agents and the other Shmumber heroes listened in horror through the agents' spyinator devices.

Killjoy the Black Harlequin hissed with joy. "You see, I also took the liberty of planting a few bombs in the buildings surrounding us!" He cackled and flipped up the cuff of his sleeve to expose a wristwatch, pressing a button on its side."You'll never be able to find and deactivate them all before they go off in three... Two... One..."

Killjoy looked around, confused. "They didn't go off?"

An indistinct blur moving through the air slowed and became The Bullet. He dumped an armful of deactivated bombs at Killjoy's feet.

"I believe these are yours," the speedster jauntily told the villain. "Shmumberman may not have been able to find them. But three seconds is plenty of time for the Fastest Man in the World!" He struck a pose. "Did you know elephants spend almost eighty percent of their day eating?"

"No," Killjoy admitted. "No, I didn't. That's fascinating."

"You can ponder that while on your way to jail!" Shmumberman told him. He then turned to The Bullet. "I'll take care of that and meet the rest of you in the Shmumber-Lair!"

Meanwhile, Doctor Darkendire had finished his rooftop battle. The Crooked Man and his minions were scattered unconscious at his feet. And Shmumbermaid guided her crystal ship down to talk to him.

And in a nearby office building, a beautiful masked woman in a white catsuit and matching cape was looting a safe when the glint of the crystal ship caught her eye.

"Hmmm," she pondered. "Doctor Darkendire, my arch-nemesis and heartthrob! And it looks like he's on a mission with his Shmumber Squad allies and..." She squinted at the window. "...Odd Squad?" She stared at the quartet of agents. "I'd heard tell of them through the villain grapevine! But what are they doing here?"

She poured the loot into a satchel and straightened her cape. "This seems like something The White Lady should definitely take an interest in!"

#

"Here is that data you wanted, President Oscar!"

Oscar took the files. "Thanks, O'Turner, Otessa!" He smiled at the two young agents. "I appreciate your work. You always follow the rules."

"Yeah," Otessa beamed. "We're good kids!"

They headed off and Oscar and Oona examined the data.

"It seems as though both the agent and their Mirror Universe duplicate have been moving through dimensions."

Oscar nodded. "That buys us a little more time," he observed. "But it also widens the potential scope of the disaster if the collapse does happen..."

Oona shuddered. "I hate interdimensional travel! It's never turned out well for me! I end up stuck in time warps or being trapped in alternate timelines or..."

"Y'ever go to the reality where we're a TV show?" Oscar asked. "That's REALLY weird. I got chased through the park by a bunch of first graders. Then some college kid told me I'd ruined his life. Todd was doing musical theater. I can't even begin to explain what happened to Otto. It was freaky."

"Oh..." Oona nodded. "Did... Did you run into my counterpart?"

"Sort of," Oscar responded. "I got a notice on my phone about a video of her singing Billy Joel songs." He started searching his pockets. "I'm pretty sure it's still saved. Y'wanna see it?"

Oona hesitated, then shook her head. "Maybe later. We've got to solve this first..."

#

Meanwhile, in Odd Squad headquarters, Owen was addressing the agents.

"We just heard from the main office! Little O's all right!"

All the agents cheered.

"She called from Shmumber-Earth on her badge-phone! She's teamed up with Olive and Otto and they're planning on getting together with OSMU! So things should be back to normal soon. Maybe." Owen rubbed the back of his neck. "I hope..."

The agents all celebrated. Except one.

"Well, gee! Little O's all right! Olive's all right! Otto's all right!" Oren sniffed in annoyance. "Isn't that just thrilling."

"Yay!" Olaf cheered, then howled. "Arooooooo!"

Oren crossed his arms and sulked. "Don't encourage them."

Olaf scratched his werewolf fur, grinning from ear to ear. "Little O's pretty!"

"Yeah. Pretty shady, if you ask me." Oren rolled his eyes. "The Big O puts her of all people in charge of finding someone to fill in for her while she's in space and she just happens to choose herself! What are the odds?"

Olaf sniffed him and licked his face.

"Don't do that."

A few desks away, Octavia turned to Orchid, who was still reading her comic. "Otto and Olive and the Little O..."

Orchid didn't even look up. "I heard him, Sherman."

Octavia was undeterred. "Is there anything about it in your comic book?"

"No," Orchid groused. "It's 'To Be Continued!' I HATE multi-part stories!"

"Oh..." Octavia looked discouraged. Then she brightened. "Wait a second! This is the day the new comics arrive in the stores!"

"Yeah!" Orchid rolled her eyes. "What a coincidence!"

"Let's go down to the comics shop and see if they're in yet! The new Shmumbermaid won't be out for another month but maybe they'll be in one of the other comics!"

#

"There must never be another Shmumberman comic!"

The stooped, hooded figure stood at the dais at the meeting room of the League of Villains, Professor Straw's stolen dimensional transporter at hand, dispatching villains right and left.

"Go! Go to the Real World! Destroy every comics shop before a single person sees a single panel of any new comic! Silence them! Silence them forever!"

Then the hooded figure turned to a tall, tattooed woman with a sword, holding out a script. "And you... I have a special assignment for you..."

#

TO BE CONTINUED...