The transparent pirate ship sailed through the skies over a city on Shmumber Earth.

On board were most of The Shmumber Squad -Shumumberman, Shmumbermaid, Shmumbra, The Bullet, and Doctor Darkendire- as well as The Odd Squad Mobile Unit. They had recently been joined by Otto, Olive, and The Little O.

Osmerelda was staring at the two veteran agents, eyes wide. "Omigosh..." she whispered. "Olive and Otto. That's Olive and Otto. That's THE Olive and Otto..."

"Yes. So you have told us," Orla responded. "Repeatedly."

She primped, checked her hair, then smiled at them as emphatically as she could. Olive and Otto shifted and smiled back a bit uncomfortably.

"Omigosh!" She gasped. "THEY SMILED AT ME!"

She waved. "Hey, guys! I'm Osmerelda!"

Otto and Olive, still nervous, waved back. "Uh, yeah. Hi... Osmerelda."

Now she was on the verge of fainting. "THEY KNOW MY NAME!"

Orla stared at her. "You just told them."

Omar leaned in close to her. "I think you're freaking them out."

"Yeah, but they know who I am!"

"Yes," Orla sighed. "You are the girl who is freaking them out."

"It's better than nothing!"

"Hey," Oswald walked over and put his arm around her shoulder. "Look, man. I get it. I understand. They're the legends. And you're nervous about impressing them. But y'gotta remember, at the end of the day, they're just people like everyone else."

"Yeah," added Omar. "But WAY cooler!"

Little O came over. "So, I've been talking to Olive and Otto..."

Osmerelda squeed. "You talked to Olive and Otto?"

Little O nodded politely. "Yeah. And just to get it outta the way: Do you want one of the signed photographs Otto carries around with him or do you want something personalized?"

She flipped open a notepad to take their orders. But before they could respond, The Bullet shouted to them.

"We've found our two remaining heroes!"

The agents looked over the railing down into the street where a major brawl was taking place. A horde of scruffy-looking men were attacking a man and a woman, both wearing wild, colorful costumes.

"I trust the duo in the fanciful attire are the people we are looking for?"

"Yeah!" Grinning ear to ear, Oswald pointed at the guy wearing various shades of green who'd pulled a bow out of nowhere and was firing arrows into the crowd of assailants. "That's The Green Shmumber! He has all kinds of trick arrows!"

Two of the arrows the man had fired burst open to drop cargo nets onto several attackers. Three more released knock-out gas. And one pinned a man by his shirt to the wall behind him.

Orla blinked. "I... see." She pondered. "Is there a reason for this or...?"

Little O took over. "The lady with him is The Quetzal! She's from Guatemala!"

She indicated a woman in a green and red costume in the midst of the battle. Though unarmed, she was doing quite well against her opponents, using various Martial Arts moves and devastating high kicks to dispatch one creep after another.

Presently, however, she spread a colorful set of wings and flew upwards, seizing The Green Shmumber and flying with him over the crowd.

"Never mind these small potatoes, lover!" she shouted to her partner. "There is the one we seek!"

A man in a tatty ermine robe and a little bronze crown stood on a balcony overlooking the battle, waving a scepter in the air.

"Attack, my minions, attack!" he shouted in a bleating, nasal voice, his mind-control scepter beeping and blinking. "Let them know who is the real King of Crime!"

Omar, Orla, and Osmerelda exchanged looks. "Uh..."

"Yeah," Oswald nodded sadly. "Green Shmumber and Quetzal just have a back-up feature in Cavalcade Comics. So they don't really get the best villains..."

Quetzal circled in the air while The Green Shmumber took aim. "Just hold me steady a second, chickadee! That's all I need!"

He fired. The arrow hit the villain's scepter, exploding it in a flurry of sparks.

"No! NO!" The crown crackled with electricity. "Feedback! AIGH!"

Below, the hooligans looked around as if awakening from a daze.

Then another arrow, this one with a boxing glove tied to one end, struck the King of Crime across the chin, knocking him unconscious.

Orla stared, blinked, and stared again. "Uh... An arrow... With a boxing glove?"

"It's one of his trademarks," Oswald explained a touch defensively.

Otto and Olive peered over the others' shoulders. "Oscar would be so jealous..."

"There's that loser bagged!" Green Shmumber told his companion. "And Shmumbermaid's ship is floating overhead! We'd better go find out what she wants!"

#

"We checked," Oona explained into her badge phone. "Mirror Olive visited Johnny Bailwick several times in the nursing home after she somehow crossed over from the other world. She told the attendants she was his grand-daughter."

Otis nodded. "And she managed to convince Mister Bailwick to go along with her crazy plan."

"She probably convinced him he'd single-handedly created the Shmumberverse," Olympia chimed in. "So that he'd feel cheated and want revenge!"

"Or maybe he did create this... 'Shmumberverse,'" Otis made a face. "There has to be a better name than that..."

Olympia shook her head. "Anyway, she used him to manipulate events in the Shmumber Universe to set up the Crisis!"

Otis looked over. "How could he manipulate...?"

"He's a professional comics writer," Olympia explained. "He can control things that happen in that world!"

"But he can't control what happens in the real world!" Oona added. "Even when Shmumberverse characters cross over into it! And he can't control the Odd Squad agents even when they're in the Shmumberverse!" Oona smiled. "That's our ace in the hole!"

Oscar nodded at her. "There, see? I said you'd find a reason to use that phrase eventually!"

Olympia interrupted. "But other comics creators can also control things that happen in that world!" She smacked her palm with her fist. "So we've just got to find a creator to work for our side!"

"And that's Big O's plan?" Otis considered. "It makes about as much sense as anything else so far." He rubbed his forehead. "But can we find a creator willing to go along with it?"

"Well, once we explain this fate of the universe is at stake... I mean, they can't all be so myopic and self-centered that they..." Olympia paused, thinking. "I mean, not all of them. I mean... Yeah. We'll do the best we can."

They all closed their badge-phones, ending the conversation.

Olympia and Otis emerged from the jump tubes behind a tree in the back yard of a modest house in a suburban neighborhood.

"So that's why The Big O sent us to find... To find..." Otis struggled to remember the name.

Olympia stepped in. "Bobby McCall." She looked around. "Come on! This shouldn't be too hard..."

#

"It's all falling apart..." Johnny Bailwick sat in his chair in the villain headquarters, staring mournfully into space. "It's all falling apart... It's just like that toy line I was gonna put out with that one guy... What was his name?"

"Never mind that!" the lavender-skinned girl in the black and grey costume adjusted him in his chair. "It's not over yet. We can still beat them..."

He patted the girl's gloved hand. "You think so, honey?"

She smiled at him, revealing sharp teeth behind black lips. "Of course, Mister Bailwick! Let's just put our heads together..."

"Yeah, I tried that once!" Vendetto the Clown sat on a folding canvas chair nearby. "I put my head together with another guy's head and I got a headache!" His chair collapsed and he tumbled to the ground. "So I got that to worry about now..."

"NOT NOW VENDETTO!" the girl hissed at the clown.

The villainess Vitriol scowled at the boisterous jokester. "As horrid as it is to agree with that... that thing, I must agree," she said. "The situation grows increasingly desperate for us. It appears we've underestimated this... Odd Squad..."

"That stops now!" The girl shouted. "We've been ignored and dismissed for far too long! But now... Now we will TAKE the spotlight that is rightfully ours!"

There was applause from the scattered villains in the dome headquarters nestled deep within the boiling magma of an isolated, active volcano.

Johnny Bailwick nodded. "That will shall, that we shall..." He looked at her. "Who are you again, sweetie?"

She sighed. "Nihilass," she reminded him, not for the first time. "The evil duplicate of Shmumbermaid created when she was first exposed to Scarlet Shmumbertonium, which rather than killing her like regular Shmumbertonium, causes strange and unpredictable things to happen to her! Even after she stripped me of my Shmumber-powers with the anti-Shmumber ray, I remained her deadliest and most unpredictable nemesis!"

Johnny Bailwick nodded absently.

"At least I did... until a new writer took over!"

Johnny Bailwick pondered. "Yeah, I never worked on Shmumbermaid. That was Kenneth Moody and Benji Shaw..."

"Yes! I know!" Nihilass struck a pose. "Until they were replaced!"

"Lessee, they had the... Yeah, there was that run where they tried out all those different costumes... And the one where she lost her powers and became a spy... I think Scotty Brinkerman wrote that..."

"And I appeared in none of them!" The villainess seethed. "I was forgotten, cast out, laughed at and dismissed!" She turned to the assembled villains. "Like all of you! LIKE ALL OF YOU!"

The villains hissed and howled.

"I've barely appeared in comics since 1965! And when they do bring me back, it's either to mock me as a 'has-been' or to use me for some ghastly 'reimagining.'"

"Tell me about it," growled Vitriol. "I've been made into a dominatrix prostitute, turned into Shmumberlad's girlfriend, killed off, brought back, killed off and brought back again, given a toddler daughter who was then killed off and brought back..."

"And we've simply had to endure it." Nihilass ground her fangs. "We were helpless against our creators' machinations." She turned to Johnny Bailwick. "Until now."

"I miss my grandson," he muttered. "I wish he'd come see me... Nobody comes to see me anymore..."

"Now, thanks to The Evil O delivering this..." she smiled viciously, stroking his hair. He didn't notice. "dear old man to us, we have the means to write our own stories! And chart our own destiny!"

She glared balefully into the distance.

"And put an end to Odd Squad's..."

She clapped twice. A viewscreen crackled to life, showing a decrepit man with a coiled cobra tattooed on his face.

"Doctor Malevolence!"

The man's head bobbed. "Mmmmmyeeeeeeeessssss?"

She winced, then went on. "Have you finished the Inter-Dimensional Transference Gate yet?"

The figure referred to as Doctor Malevolence rolled backward on the spider-like wheeled projections that sprang from his lower torso.

"I am working on it, ALRIGHT?" He rolled across the room. "I told you, it's not simply a matter of scaling the original device up. All the settings have to be recalibrated."

The camera followed him as he wheeled past the stolen inter-dimensional transfer device, now sitting on a workbench in the foreground, partially disassembled. Then he approached an enormous, pulsing arc displaying exposed circuitry and nests of tangled wires. He picked up a screwdriver and set to work tightening something.

"And as I keep telling you, I will CALL you when it's READY!"

The screen shut off and retracted back into the wall.

"When the Gate is ready," she shouted to her fellow villains, "we won't have to just cross over one or two at a time!" She hissed with glee. "We can invade the 'Real World' en masse! A world where there are NO Shmumber-Heroes... A world RIPE FOR CONQUEST!"

The villains cheered and applauded.

Johnny Bailwick looked around. "Did I win something again?"

#

TO BE CONTINUED...