Archive of Our Own

The day of the annual in-precinct field trip is here, and Olympia thinks it's strange watching it from the perspective of an actual agent. She feels kind of like she's watching a movie of her own life, like an outsider… it's strangely nostalgic. She smiles and waves at excitedly bouncing students, clad in gray sweaters, running around the bullpen. Eventually, though, they have to leave, and like Olympia did when she was a student, they scream and cry until they need to be dragged out one by one by their instructor. 

Olympia sighs wistfully. She misses the Academy, sure, but she likes it way more here. As great as the Academy was, it didn’t have Otis. 

Speaking of Otis…

“Otis,” Olympia starts, chewing on her pen. “Do you ever think about what would happen if we had met each other in the Academy?”

Otis glances up, cocking an eyebrow at her with a weird expression. He clears his throat. “We weren't at the Academy together. We couldn't have been.”

Twirling her pen absentmindedly, Olympia shrugs. “I know! Just, like, you know, hypothetically.”

Otis scratches his head. “Um, I don't wanna think about that. I was… a little different.”

Olympia snorts. “No way! I bet little Otis was super cute. He and little Olympia would’ve gotten along like a house on fire!” She swings her elbow side to side a little at the last three words, all while grinning cheesily. Otis grimaces.

Awkwardly, he scribbles something on a document before closing the file. “There were some… extenuating factors. I don’t think it would’ve been easy.”

“Pshaw,” Olympia scoffs, flapping a hand casually. “You’re you, and I’m me! How could we have not gotten along?”

Otis shrugs in a neutral way, but with an Otis-y tilt to his shoulders that Olympia knows means he's a little sad. “Whatever you say, Olympia.”

Olympia rolls her eyes playfully, before losing balance of the twirling pen. It flies away and smacks someone who had apparently snuck up on the two of them while they weren’t paying attention. The two of them flinch back, Otis pulling out a gadget defensively.

“Howdy-doo!” Oona says, grinning lopsidedly and rubbing at her nose. “Sorry for sneaking up on you two. Um, so, I’m going to need your help with something.”

Otis frowns. “Will it involve you dropping a gadget and starting a whole thing that’s going to take 11, or if it’s really serious, 22 minutes to solve?”

“Whaaaat?” Oona laughs uncomfortably, surreptitiously feeling for something in her jacket pocket. She pats it and visibly untenses when she finds that whatever she’s looking for is still there. “No way! I’ve read the case files with Oscar, I’m way more responsible than that.”

A bead of sweat drips down her cheek. She pats anxiously at her jacket again.

“Um,” Olympia says with a nervous smile. “What are you hiding?”

“HIDING?” Oona cries. She bursts into laughter. Loud, unhinged, shaky laughter. “WHAAAT? Oh, Olympia, you're such a kidder,” she says, deliberately avoiding eye contact. “I wouldn't hide anything from you guys! You're my best friends ever and I'd—”

Otis holds up a glowing little rock locked with a heavy titanium lock in a tiny glass cube. “She's hiding this.”

“HOW DID YOU—”

Olympia peers at it. “Oooh, it's pretty! What is it?”

“Otis,” Oona says slowly. “Um. Don't, um, don’t worry, it's not dangerous at all, just put it down. Now.”

Otis has already picked the lock and has the little rock taken out of its container and sitting in his hand. “Oh, nice, it isn't dangerous. Is it edible?” He holds it up to his eye and peers at it through the light, seemingly examining its comestibility. 

Oona screams. A shrill, horrified, blood-curdling scream. She fumbles for a gadget, pulling it hurriedly out of her lab coat, before throwing the entire thing at Otis. He cries out as it hits him on the side of his head, dropping the little rock. It falls to the ground and rolls out of sight.  

“HEY!” Otis cries, rubbing at his cheek. “What was that for?” 

Oona laughs. Really, really, unsteadily. She laughs and laughs, backing away from him, dragging Olympia back along with her. Eventually, she drags Olympia so far away that they’re in the lab while Otis is still standing awkwardly in the bullpen, staring confusedly at them.

“That rock was dangerous, wasn’t it.” Olympia sighs. 

“YOU THINK?” Oona cries. “It had a TITANIUM LOCK! I DON’T EVEN KNOW HOW OTIS BROKE IT!” She paces around the lab, tugging at her hair. She sneaks a glance at Otis from across the bullpen, trying to seem discreet but failing miserably. “Okay,” she whispers. “Okay, there’s a chance that it’ll all be okay. We just need to see how Otis holds up for the next 15 seconds.”

“Um, what’s—

“Ten, nine, eight, seven, six—” Oona mutters under her breath. 

Something explodes loudly in the bullpen. Agents start screaming and running away as a bright flash of blinding blue light slices through Olympia’s vision, and something that sounds suspiciously similar to a duck quacking reverberates throughout the building. Olympia gasps. “OTIS?” she cries. 

“OONA!” Ms. O screams from the second floor.

 Oona buries her face in her hands. 

“This,” she hisses, “was not my fault.”

She smiles without any trace of mirth, a smile with far too many teeth. Olympia takes a step back. 

“Let it be known that it was NOT MY FAULT,” She shrieks into the bullpen. 

Olympia rushes out of the lab and towards where Otis was. She tries waving away the dust and debris in the air.

“Otis?” She cries, waving away more dust. “OTIS!” 

The cloud clears somewhat, and Olympia can make out some of the figures in front of her. A crater replaces what used to be the smooth, unmarred floor, and Olympia and Otis’s desks (and everything that used to be on them) have been absolutely blasted to bits, lying in broken piles on the floor. A crouching figure sits in the middle of the detritus, looking to be trembling slightly. 

Olympia stops in her tracks. “Otis?”

The dust settles, and Olympia stiffens. She takes a step back at what she sees. 

The villain detection alarms go off. 

“Explain yourself, Agent Oona.” Ms. O says sternly, resting her chin on her hands.

“Okay!” Oona says, grinning in a way that makes her look a lot more like she’s baring her teeth than actually grinning. “Okay. How was I going to know that Otis would SNEAK BEHIND ME AND SNATCH SOMETHING OUT OF MY POCKET?” She laughs, her voice growing louder and more unsteady the more she talks until she shrieks the last words. Olympia covers her ears and shifts away from Oona.

Ms. O opens her mouth to respond, before eventually closing it. She shrugs.

“Fair enough.”

“IT WAS LOCKED WITH TITANIUM! I LEARNED! HE DIDN’T!”

“Okay,” Olympia interrupts. “Can we talk about what happened to Otis? And what that little rock was? Because I might seem calm, but I’m actually really freaking out right now.”

Olympia’s leg has been bouncing up and down so quickly that it’s started a little fire on her pants. She looks down at it, squeaks, and pats it out hurriedly. 

Adjusting her bowtie, Oona clears her throat. “That,” She starts, “was a highly unstable element that I plucked from timespace. You remember when I got stuck in a time loop for a couple decades? And the time I accidentally transported myself to the garlic bread dimension for half a year?”

Ms. O takes a breath in through her teeth. “Awkward,” she mutters. 

Oona laughs maniacally. “Pfft, it's no biggie,” She grins, looking away and waving her hand nonchalantly. “Not like it had a lasting impact on my character or anything!” 

She cackles with her eyes wide open, her pupils pinpricks. Olympia feels vaguely uncomfortable.

“Anyways, I had Dr. O pull that little crystal out of what used to be my appendix this morning. I think what’s left collapsed on itself and became a black hole, which makes sense since I’ve had a bit of a tummy ache recently… anyways, it’s the same element Oscar used to make his time travel gadgets with, and the same thing Father Time uses for his staff. Y’know. THINGS PEOPLE DON’T USUALLY TOUCH.”

“And Otis plucked it out of your pocket and held it,” Olympia sighs. “And that…”

“Triggered an anachronistic reaction between non-synonymous particles,” Oona finishes. 

Olympia and Ms. O look at her confusedly. 

“In non-Oona talk?” Ms. O asks. 

“Otis has been swapped out for another Otis from another time,” Oona says. “Or another dimension. Could be either one. Or both.”

Olympia smiles tightly. She laughs, her voice sounding painfully strained, excusing herself and walking out of Ms. O’s office. As soon as the glass doors slide closed, she turns around and screams so shrilly that the sound pierces right through the doors and into the office. Ms. O and Oona cover their ears. 

Olympia walks back in, a lock of hair slipping out of her ponytail and flopping over her eyes. She smiles shakily.

“So,” She says awkwardly, plopping back down onto the chair. Grimacing, she blows the lock of hair out of her eyes. “What… what do we do now?”

“I can probably fix this,” Oona murmurs. “But if I can’t, we can just wait for it to wear off. The element should familiarize with Otis and calm down.” She looks down and fiddles with her bowtie, looking suspiciously sheepish.

Ms. O frowns. “And how long will that take?”

Oona shrugs. “Around six and a half months.”

Ms. O slams her desk and lurches forward, snarling. “WE DON’T HAVE SIX AND A HALF MONTHS!” She roars. “I NEED OTIS BACK TODAY!”

Confused, Olympia furrows her brow. “But… why? I mean, we aren’t on a case, and the world isn’t going to end… is it?” She sucks a breath in through her teeth and glances nervously at Oona, immediately regretting her words.

“Nope, it isn’t,” Oona says, thankfully. 

Olympia sighs in relief, clutching at her chest.

“The Xs are bound to visit soon,” Ms. O hisses. “The containment of an element as dangerous as Oona’s is illegal in regular precincts, and a reaction as big as this one is bound to get noticed. You blew up my entire bullpen! If the Xs find out something like this happened, they’ll shut the Squad down! You need to find Otis and reverse this, RIGHT NOW!”

Oona chuckles. “I think I’ll name it Oononium. It has a nice ring to it, y’k—”

“I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS!” Olympia cries. “Where do we find Otis? What happened to our Otis, the one from our time and dimension? Why did the villain detection alarm go off? Why did—”

“NO TIME!” Ms. O shouts, slamming her desk again. “WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? GO!” 

Olympia opens her mouth and holds up a finger as if to say something, but Oona glances at her and shakes her head. Slouching, Olympia stands up and strides out of the office.

Ms. O grabs a juice box and takes a sip, sighing. “I wonder how Olive and Otto are doing.”

Oona and Olympia jog down the stairs.

“I saw Otis’s silhouette running into the hallways! Well, more like waddling, for some reason. Oh no, maybe he hurt his leg!” Olympia cries, beelining for the right hallway entrance.

“But if he went inside, he could be anywhere,” Oona groans, following Olympia.

Olympia frowns. “You’re right… okay, let’s split up! You go left, I’ll go right!” 

Oona nods and mock-salutes her, running into the entrance and disappearing from view. Olympia sprints into the right tube entrance, looking around wildly. She hops over Orchid, who was sitting right in the middle of the hallway, playing with her dinosaurs. 

When she reaches the corridors where rooms start appearing, she skids to a stop. Gritting her teeth, she shakes her head to clear it and starts opening and closing every single door. 

“OTIS?” She calls, cupping her hands to her mouth. “OTIS, WHERE ARE YOU?”

Bubble room? No, nothing. Basketball room? No, nothing. Donut room? Is that—no, that’s Ori. She groans and keeps sprinting across the hallways, hurriedly opening and closing doors. 

In and out, in and out. By the time she reaches the end of the hallway, she’s covered in a gross sludge of a mix of whatever stuff was in the rooms. She turns a corner and repeats the process with the next hallway, out of breath. 

Owen waves to her as she passes, but she doesn’t even notice him, huffing and puffing. Her legs wobble like they’re about to give out, and by the time the fifth hallway is done, she flops onto the ground to take a breather.

Footsteps sound from the distance. “Olympia?” Someone asks.

Olympia leans up and cracks an eye open. It’s Ocean, leaning over her confusedly. “You good?”

“Ocean!” Olympia wheezes, hauling herself to her feet. “Have you seen Otis?”

Otis squints, looking away and scratching his head. “Mmmm, I don’t think so…

After a while, he clicks his teeth and shoots a finger gun at Olympia. “I did see Oona looking for him, though. She looked real stressed.”

Olympia sighs and buries her head in her hands. “Thanks, Ocean.”

Ocean nods slowly, relaxedly smiling. “By the way, have you seen a suuuper deadly creature around? She’s usually chill for her species, like a cool summer breeze, but now she’s all…” He makes a wiggly gesture with his fingers, “un-chill, like an uncool summer breeze. Y’know, the sticky, humid ones.”

He makes an exploding motion with his hands, before chuckling quietly. “I don’t think I’m making it past today, man.”

Olympia stares at him incredulously. “I’m sorry?” She asks weakly.

Ocean shrugs nonchalantly. “Yeah, today’s been going all sorts of wrong. Like, the bullpen blew up, and it messed up a lot of the cages in the creature room. Y’know, since we’re right under you guys? Like, I know I look all relaxed and chill, but if I make it home today I’m totally gonna bawl my eyes out,” he says, with a super down-to-earth smile. Olympia gapes at him in disbelief.

“No, what—THE CREATURE!”

Ocean nods and holds up his index, going ‘ohhh’ softly. “My bad. She’s black, brown and gray with sharp talons and piercing eyes, and she’s very angry looking. And she doesn’t move in a pattern.” He makes his hand into a little croissant and holds it up to his ear. “Call me if you see her, ‘kay? If I don’t pick up, tell Ms. O I want my funeral to be blue and gold themed.”

He shoots Olympia some final finger guns and saunters away, whistling. Olympia stares at him, absolutely dumbfounded, before he turns a corner and disappears. She shakes her head and keeps searching the halls for Otis.  

Eventually, she sprints right into Oona. The two of them shriek and topple over, crashing mildly painfully into the floor.

“OONA!” Olympia cries. “Did you find him?”

Oona throws her arms into the air exasperatedly. “Does it look like I found him?”

Olympia sighs. “Fair enough… Where could he be?” she cries, flailing her arms. “We’ve checked everywhere, and you really need to start working on a gadget that can fix him!”

Oona drags a hand down her face. “I DON’T KNOW!” She takes a deep breath. “Okay, we’ll split up. You continue looking for Otis, and I go back to the lab to make a gadget.”
“But—”

“BYE, OLYMPIA!” 

Oona runs off, beelining for the lab. Olympia drops her arms, scowling. She walks back into the hallways, muttering mildly bitter things under her breath. She’s careful not to say or think anything too mean, because if she did, she’d feel bad. 

“Where would Otis be…”

What does Otis like? Rocks? T-shirts? Socks?

Olympia trudges dejectedly through the halls, running her hand over all the doors.

She approaches the French Pastry Room, sighing. Maybe a snack would do… she did skip lunch in favour of running around on a wild goose chase, after all.

Pulling open the door and rubbing at her eyes, she walks into the French Pastry Room…

And Otis is sitting right in the middle of it, having an absolute feast. 

“Hey, Oona,” Ocean says, poking his head into the lab. Oona jumps and nearly drops the circuit board she’s holding, her head snapping up. She exhales loudly, gently setting her tech on a table.

“Ocean,” Oona says shakily, smiling with her eyes blown wide. “The last person who shocked me when I was holding technology got teleported to another dimension, and we don’t know where he went and how to get him back yet.” She takes a deep breath. “DON’T. Do that.”

Ocean shrugs. “To be honest, right now I’d prefer being in another dimension to staying in this one. Have you seen Allison? Y'know, black, gray, brown, very angry?”

Oona sighs heavily. “No, I haven’t seen Allison.”

Ocean shrugs. “Dang. Well, here’s my two hours’ notice,” Ocean says, pulling out a crumpled piece of paper dripping with creature slobber. “And here’s my will.” He pulls out another piece of paper and hands both to Oona, who pinches it out of his hands, grimacing. 

Oona squints at the pieces of paper. “Outlaw pineapple pizza in all of North America,” she reads slowly. 

Ocean shrugs again, grinning. “I want my death to have a positive effect on the world.”

Sighing, Oona shakes her head and wipes her hands on her pants. “Well, since you can’t find Allison, why don’t you help me out in the lab? I’ve, uh, got some stuff that I think isn’t fit for a one-person job.”

She jerks her thumb at a 10-meter-tall pile of gadgets behind her. 

“Including disassembling all of those for parts.”

Humming quietly and tapping the side of his face, Ocean eventually relents and shrugs. “Sure. You got a bunker in here, right?”

Oona narrows her eyes at him. “How… how’d you find out about the bunker?”

Ocean shrugs. “The vents are right above the Creature Room. I hear you clanging around in it eating beans sometimes.”

“Hm.” Oona stares at the circuitry on her work desk. “Yeah, good to know.”

“Gnarly. We’ll have somewhere to hide when Allison comes for us.”

Oona stares at Ocean. He clicks his tongue and finger guns her. Oona buries her head in her hands. 

Olympia takes a tentative step forwards. Otis’s head snaps up at her movement, and he scampers back, backing himself into a corner.

“...Otis?”

He’s dressed in some sort of steampunk-style outfit, with frilly sleeves and a strange cap with goggles pushed up to his forehead. It kind of looks like the elaborate outfits that most villains have for some reason… he also looks a lot younger. 

Olympia’s brow furrows.

“Hey,” she says softly, taking another tiny step forward. “Otis, it’s me. It’s Olympia.”

Otis crawls further back, trembling. He doesn’t show any recognition at the sound of his name. Olympia grows more and more concerned by the second.

“Hey, I’m not going to hurt you, it’s me, it’s Oly—”

Otis jumps to his feet, pushes past her, and bolts out the door. Olympia cries out and chases after him.

“OTIS!” She cries, sprinting through the halls. She’s already winded, she can’t keep this up for much longer. “OTIS, WHERE ARE YOU GOING?”

He doesn’t respond or even glance back to check if she’s still following, he just keeps running. And running, and running, and running, until eventually he turns a corner and Olympia tastes blood at the back of her throat. 

Her sprint turns to a run, which turns to a jog, and then a walk, and then nothing.

He’s gone. She lost him. 

Olympia takes one last staggered step forward, before falling to her knees out of exhaustion. 

It’s alright. She’ll recharge, and she’ll find him again. Maybe get a snack while she’s waiting. Panting heavily, she walks into the Sub Sandwich Room to get lunch.

She considers her options. If she really couldn’t find him, maybe she could get security to do a search… oh, whatever, she’ll cross that bridge when she comes to it. 

About to take a bite out of her sandwich, Olympia nods in satisfaction, thinking about how good it’s about to taste. Then her badge phone goes off, and the moment is ruined. Sighing, she puts her sandwich down and answers the phone.

“This is a new way of answering the phone crafted by yours truly. Olympia speaking, how can I hel—”

“THE XS ARE HERE!” Ms. O’s voice shrieks from the other end.

“WHAT?” Olympia cries. “BUT WE STILL HAVEN’T FOUND OTIS! AND OONA HASN’T MADE THE GADGET!”

A crash sounds from Ms. O’s end. “ORCHID, STALL HARDER !” She yells. “Olympia, you need to get this sorted out before the Xs find out and shut down our Squad.”

“But Ms. O, I—”

Another crash sounds from the other side. “Ms. O, they’re getting mad, we can’t—” O’Brian’s voice wheezes from the other end. Ms. O growls. “Call Oren and Olaf. Olympia, I have to go. Good luck, agent.”

The line goes dead.

Dread pools in Olympia’s gut.

The sandwich sitting in front of her doesn’t look as appetizing as it did a minute ago. She pockets it and continues her search.

“Okay, all the gadgets are disassembled,” Ocean says with a grin, crossing his arms. “High five?”

He holds his hand up expectantly. 

Oona lifts up her welding mask and glances at Ocean, impressed. She high fives him with her welder's gloves still on. Ocean glances down at the soot now staining his hands and wipes them on his pants. Oona grimaces. “Sorry. You did it that quickly?”

Ocean shrugs. “I mean, yeah. Destroying gadgets is kinda fun, actually. Reminds me of what’s going to happen to my bones when Allison inevitably sniffs out where I am and comes for me,” he says casually. “Plus, I work better when I’m stressed. Like a tidal wave in the ocean,” he says, looking somewhere into the distance and making a flowy gesture with his arms. “Like my name! Whoosh.”

Oona stands up and examines the pile of now-broken gadgets, nodding in approval. “Nice work! This is destroyed with love.”

Ocean finger guns her. “You know it.”

“Okay, my next job for you is to collect all the processors in the gadgets. Y’know, the little silver chips in them? Streaked with blue, glow in the dark, violates the Occupational Health and Safety Act?” Oona holds up a processor to show it to Ocean.

Ocean squints at it, before grinning and nodding slowly. “I gotchu. I feed the ones you throw out to my creatures sometimes. He pauses for a second, before nodding thoughtfully. “Good source of asbestos.”

“Please don’t tell that to Ms. O.”

“Not a problem. Three hundred whatever-you-called-its, coming right up.”

“OTIS, PLEASE STOP RUNNING!”

He doesn't even glance back, just turns another bend and disappears. Olympia staggers after him, distraught. 

“... what are you doing?” A cold voice asks. 

What sounds like thirty separate voices flare up in protest before Olympia can answer.

She looks up. Oren, Olaf, O'Brian, Orchid, Dr. O, Oksana, Ori, Ohlm, Ozlyn, Obfusco, Orson, Olly, Octavia, and presumably Oz are all crowded and smushed together in a clump in the middle of the corridor. In the little gap where Oz is probably standing, Olympia can see Xavier and Xena looking incredibly ticked off.

She doesn’t even want to know what’s happening. 

“Oh…” Olympia says with a strained smile. “Hey, Xavier. Hey, Xena. How's it, uh, rolling?”

“Bad,” Xena hisses. “We need to talk to Agent 63.”

Oren sucks in a breath through his teeth. “Oooh… it's a real pity that Agent 63 got promoted… She isn’t really here anymore.”

“The other one,” Xavier snaps.

Obfusco nods sagely. “Nonetheless, like a magnolia tree in a coal mine, you must make haste. Like a cicada.”

“He means you should go back to the Big Office,” Oksana says dryly.

Every agent in the cluster murmurs agreements. 

“SILENCE!” Xena cries. The crowd falls to an uneasy quiet. She turns towards Olympia and narrows her eyes. “Where's your… partner? ” She spits the last word out like a curse. 

“UM,” Octavia cuts in immediately, looking nervously at Olympia. Olympia smiles at her gratefully. “Why don't we show you the, uh, the, uh…”

She looks pleadingly at the crowd of agents around her. 

“Donut Room!”

“Volcano Room!”

“Toxic Waste Containment Room!”

“POTATO!”

“The, um, the… Toxic Waste, uh, Potato Volcano Donut Containment Room!” Octavia finishes incredibly awkwardly. “It's a great place, promise.”

“A must-see,” Dr. O says flatly. “Trust me, I'm a doctor.”

Orchid claps loudly, glaring at everyone in the clump. “Come on, let's go, let's go!”

The crowd of agents shuffles down the hallway, pushing Xavier and Xena along with them unwillingly. Olympia squeezes past them awkwardly, waving at them. A couple agents glare at her as they pass, and the Xs eye Olympia suspiciously. Eventually, the entire crowd disappears around a bend and the sound of their horribly stunted small talk fades away. 

As soon as they're gone, Olympia breaks into a sprint. 

“OTIS!” She continues calling. 

She turns a bend and stops, seeing a figure slipping into the Woodland Pond Room. Sweating, she shrugs off her jacket, tying it around her waist. 

Speedwalking to the room and opening the door gently, Olympia enters the room. In a stroke of genius, she locks it behind her from the outside using Owen's security pad, so that Otis can't escape. 

Otis is in the back, curled up into a ball.

“Otis,” Olympia says, dropping her jacket by the door and rolling up her sleeves. She holds her arms up in surrender. “Otis, please don't run, I'm not here to hurt you.”

Otis glances at her, and then at her bunched up jacket by the door. 

He makes a run for it. 

Pushing past her and beelining for the door, he tugs at the knob… and it doesn't give. He panics, and Olympia feels a twinge of guilt at it, but she needs to make sure he's okay.

“Otis!” She cries, as he continues tugging to no avail. “Hey, stop! Calm down!”

Otis lets go of the knob and stares at her, terrified. He takes a step back. 

“Otis,” Olympia repeats, softer. “I just want to talk.”

Eyes wide and watery, Otis slumps. He backs himself into the corner of the room again. He curls up into a tight ball, his eyes never leaving Olympia. She doesn't pursue, she just sits down facing him. 

The two of them sit in silence for a while, Otis staring at her in disquiet from his corner. 

Olympia remembers her sandwich. 

She pulls it out from behind her back with a little ding . Upon realizing she has nothing to put it on, she pulls out her Paper-Plateinator, and zaps the ground in front of her. Otis flinches violently at the beam of light. 

“Sorry,” Olympia says sheepishly. She sets the sandwich on the plate and pushes it towards Otis.

He eyes it extremely skeptically. 

“It's not poisoned, I swear!” Olympia says, putting up her hands. “I don't even know how to make poison. Well, I'm sure Oona does, but I don't think you know Oona, and I don't even know how old you are right now, and Oona wasn't anywhere near the—”

Otis snatches the sandwich and tears it apart ravenously.  

“Okay, nice!” Olympia says, mildly surprised that it actually worked. She smiles. 

More silence. Well, not really silence . The water in the pond is sloshing back and forth calmly, and there are cattails swaying gently in an artificial breeze. Ducks quack quietly in the distance, crickets chirp somewhere in the reeds, and, of course, Otis is absolutely destroying his sandwich. 

“So!” Olympia says uncomfortably after a beat. “Um, you probably don't know me anymore. I’m Olympia, and…”

She gasps. 

“You probably don't even know what happened to you! Oh my gosh, I've just been chasing you all morning and you don't even know why!”

She buries her face in her hands. “Otis, Otis, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. ”

Otis stares at her with an unreadable expression. He takes a slow bite of his sandwich. 

Olympia takes a deep breath. “Phew, okay, it's a lot. Did I already introduce myself? I'm Olympia. Agh, usually I have a script for this…”

The Odd Squad theme song goes off in the distance. Otis flinches and shuffles back.

“Sorry,” Olympia says, grimacing. “I probably have to take this.”

She jogs to her jacket and takes out her phone, opening it and pressing it to her ear. “Olympia utilizing millions of years of evolution to speak to you in an efficient and comprehensive manner, how can I help you?”

“The Xs are on your tail,” Ms. O snaps from the other end, her voice strained and panicked. “Xavier is already on his way. You need to hide—Heyyyyy, Xena! Hahaha, my good friend Xena, aren’t you just my favourite little Occupational Health and Safety Examiner?” A muffled sound that sounds strangely similar to someone patting someone else awkwardly on the head echoes from the other end. Olympia furrows her brow and squints one eye. She stares at her phone incredulously. 

“Hahaha. Oh, my phone? Pffft, I’m just, uh, taking my Squad-Mandated-In-Work-15-Minute-Break! Yeah, ‘cause I’m the boss and all. Um, I’m calling my good friend, uh, Jéremie! Say hi, Jéremie.”

Olympia stares dumbfoundedly at her phone, terrified.

“He’s a little shy. Come on, Jéremie.”

“...Allo,” Olympia says, deepening her voice and speaking in a terrible French accent. “C’est, uh, an honeur to meet you.”

Ms. O laughs awkwardly on the other end. “Oh, Jéremie. Always—what a guy. Um, bye!”

The line goes dead. Olympia takes a deep breath and closes her phone. 

“Otis, we have to go,” Olympia says, picking up her jacket. “The Xs, um, some bad people, are after us.”

She stands up, and Otis doesn’t move a muscle.

Olympia grows anxious. “Come on, Otis, we have to go! They’ll be here any moment n—”

Someone bangs on the door. Olympia jumps.

“Otis!” She whisper-yells.

“ODD SQUAD, ODD SQUAD, OPEN UP RIGHT THIS INSTANT!” Xavier yells from outside. Olympia squeaks. Beeps of a keypad sound faintly from behind the door, and Olympia's heart pounds in her chest. 

“Otis, we—”

The door flies open.

“WHERE IS THE VILLAIN?” Xavier barks, striding up to Olympia. “WHERE IS HE?”

Olympia’s heart sinks to her stomach.

“Ooookay, I got all the chips out,” Ocean says, dropping a pile of processors onto Oona’s desk. She examines them, picking one up with her precision-based robot arm and examines both sides. She nods, impressed.

“Alright, nice! Leave ‘em here, and I’ll add the most powerful in. I’m almost done the thingy.”

Ocean sighs loudly, flopping onto the floor starfish style. “Anything else you got?”

Oona thinks for a second. “I need the crystal Otis dropped, but I’ll get that mysel—actually, no, I trust you more with it than I trust myself.”

Nodding and grinning, Ocean clicks his tongue. “Sweet.”

“There are protective gloves on the counter in the back. The crystal should still be on the floor somewhere, in the middle of the crater. Nobody’s been in the bullpen since it went off, so it should still be there…” Oona crosses her fingers and nearly drops the chassis of the gadget she’s building while she does so. She glances around embarrassedly, hoping no one saw. 

Ocean pulls on the insulated latex gloves and a thick mask before jogging towards the crater in the bullpen and peeking into it. Nothing blue and glowing…

He glances around the crater, kicking away debris and pulling apart piles. Nothing blue and glowing. Maybe it lost its glowiness when it went off?

“Oona?” He calls.

“Yeah?” Oona calls back.

“Is it all blue and glowy?”

“Should be, yeah!”

“Huh. Guess I’ll keep looking, then.”

Oona furrows her brow and sets the chassis of the gadget, now filled with more hardware, down on the countertop. She walks over to where Ocean is picking apart what used to be someone’s computer.

“It isn’t in the crater?” Oona asks, her brow furrowed. Ocean shrugs. 

“Didn’t see it. Maybe it rolled somewhere.”

Oona’s breathing quickens. “No, I saw it in there earlier, I just didn’t pick it up because Olympia and I were chasing Otis.”

Ocean frowns. “Um… does it move on its own?”

“It shouldn't!” Oona cries, her voice pitching up an octave. “I can't finish the gadget without the crystal!”

“Hey, hey, Oona,” Ocean says soothingly, holding up his hands. “It's alright. Just finish up the base of the gadget first, and we can put the crystal in when we find it, ‘kay?”

Oona takes a deep breath in and out, closing her eyes. “Alright,” she says stiffly. “I'm okay, it's alright, EVERYTHING IS FINE!”

Her shout echoes through the bullpen. Ocean raises his eyebrows. 

“How are you so calm?” Oona groans.

Ocean shrugs. “I'm not. I'm just real good at hiding it,” he says, finger gunning Oona. “Alright bro, you go do whatever sciency stuff you're doing and I'll keep looking for the crystal.”

“Got it,” Oona says, her voice still a little high. She picks up her screwdriver and continues tinkering with the gadget, the bullpen quiet with only quiet zapping noises emanating from the lab. 

The two of them work in silence for a while, before something moves. 

A chunk of gravel drops to the ground.

The hair on the back of Ocean's neck stands on end. He backs up a step, glancing around the desolated bullpen before breaking into a sprint and dashing back to the lab.

“Oona,” he says, rare panic bleeding into his voice. “Oona, something's wrong.”

Oona glances at him, lifting up her welder's mask and grinning at him. “Well, I'm done the gadget, so everything is going a-okay!” She laughs, swinging her arms. “You were right, staying calm is really important!”

“NO!” Ocean shouts. Oona flinches back. 

“What—”

“We have to get out of here,” Ocean shudders. “We need to hide.”

“What—”

“JUST TRUST ME!” Ocean cries. 

Oona freezes, before grabbing the gadget and sweeping a couple others off the shelves. She runs over to the vent that covers the bunker and quickly unscrewing it, climbing in and ushering Ocean over. He crawls in warily.

The door slams shut behind them, Oona screwing the nuts and bolts back into place. “What's going on?” She whispers frantically. “What's happening?”

Ocean runs a hand through his hair, the other hand playing with his shell necklace. 

“Allison found us,” he whispers back hollowly.

A monstrous screech tears through the air outside. A piercing blue glow shines through the gaps in the vent.

“And I think I know where your crystal went.”

“It's not what you think!” Olympia cries, backing up and raising her arms, trying to shield Otis from view. “I—”

“WHERE IS THE VILLAIN?” Xavier demands again, scanning the room. Olympia raises an eyebrow. Shouldn't it be obvious where Otis is? 

Olympia glances to her left, wanting to shield him from view.

He isn't there. 

Okay, no. She can work with that.

“Wwwhat villain?” Olympia laughs, leaning on an ash tree. “There's no villain here, just—just me on my lunch break!”

She grabs the half eaten sandwich on the floor. 

“Mmmm, pond floor sandwich. My favourite,” she says awkwardly, tearing a bit of lettuce off the side and shoving it into her mouth. “So good,” she says, a crumb of dirt falling out of the corner. Olympia gags.

Xavier eyes her suspiciously. He does a sweep of the room again. 

“You're on your lunch break… in here?” He snaps.

Olympia scoffs nonchalantly, waving a hand. “Nnnn, uh, nature! I love nature. So you should totally get out of here and leave me alone to appreciate nature, ‘cause I love nature and… ponds. And, uh, yeah.”

She marches up to Xavier and pushes him out the door, waving to him cheerfully. “Bye! Thanks for popping in, loved it, don’t do it again!”

She locks the door once he’s outside, pressing her weight against it and taking a deep breath in. She takes a couple more, before groaning loudly and running around the room.

“Otis? OTIS!” She calls, peering behind trees and in dense clumps of reeds. Her shoes start getting soggy, and Olympia groans again.

“Swamp water shoes,” She says weakly. “Great. Love that.”

She flops onto her back and stares up at the ceiling, contemplating her life decisions. The artificial lights burn holes into her vision, and the little sparrows chirp as if nothing is wrong, and Otis is perched on one of the beams like—

What.

Otis is perched on one of the beams.

He stares at her from above, before climbing gracefully down somehow. He jumps when he’s around 15 meters in the air, and… 

Olympia screams and covers her face with her hands. She doesn’t want to look, she doesn’t want to look—

A soft thump, not a loud one. Even so, Olympia flinches.

Mushy footsteps sound close to where she’s lying down, and reluctantly, she uncovers her face. Otis is staring down at her with wide blue eyes, his head tilted confusedly.

“Hey,” Olympia says weakly. 

“...hey,” Otis says back.

Olympia blinks at him.

Otis blinks back.

Olympia jolts up into a sitting position, beaming brightly. She squeals in excitement. “YOU TALKED! YOU CAN TALK! Okay, we’re one step closer to fixing this!”

Otis blinks at her, a strange expression on his face. 

Shakily, he smiles.

“WHAT DO WE DO?” Oona cries, tugging at her hair. “ALL MY GADGETS ARE OUTSIDE!”

“I DON’T KNOW!” Ocean shouts back, rummaging in hammerspace for something that could help. He has a titanium-enforced net, a slab of raw meat, and a broom. He buries his face in his hands. 

Oona digs behind her back as well, before a loud crashing sound tears at their eardrums from the other side of the vent. The two of them scream shrilly. 

“I DON’T THINK I CAN KEEP CALM ANYMORE,” Ocean shrieks. “Okay, no, I lied. Deep breath in, deep breath out. I already gave everyone my will. It’ll all be okay,” he says slowly. “It’ll all be fine.”

“Ocean,” Oona says through gritted teeth. “If you die, then I die. And I DON’T WANT TO DIE!” Oona cries, grabbing onto Ocean’s shoulders. “SO WE’RE GOING TO FIGURE OUT A SOLUTION, OR I’M GOING TO HAUNT YOU IN THE AFTERLIFE!”

Ocean grimaces and holds up his hands in surrender. “Alright, alright, chill, dude. We got this,” he says, sounding absolutely like he’s lying.

“Are you just saying that to make me feel better?” Oona asks, her voice still a little shrill.

“Totally,” Ocean responds, nodding. 

Oona nods, and double taps her watch. A screen in the shape of the Department of Science insignia unfolds. 

“Okay, first, we need data. What patterns does this creature move in?”

“Oh, easy,” Ocean responds, grinning. Oona untenses, exhaling. “It doesn’t. No math with this one,” Ocean continues, leaning against the walls of the vent and crossing his arms. “It’s completely random.”

“ What? ” Oona hisses. 

Ocean shrugs. “O’Jay dared me to take her in. I couldn’t say no when she was smiling at me like that.”

Oona stares at him, wide eyed and horrified. She shakes her head, before turning back to her watch. The words ‘ no pattern ’ type themselves across the screen, and Oona feels a lot less confident about her job choices. 

“That’s…” she starts, staring dejectedly at her watch. “It’s, um, fine. Does this creature have any preferences? So that we can make a prediction about where it’ll strike next?”

Something crashes loudly outside. The creature screeches shrilly, before the sound of shattering glass and splashing chemicals makes Oona cringe and glance outside with scandalized eyes. 

“I JUST BOUGHT THOSE FLASKS!” She wails.

Ocean shrugs. “I think she’ll be staying here for a while.”

Oona groans and double taps her watch, dismissing it. She flops onto the ground. “What even is she? A dragon? A gargoyle? A man-made horror beyond comprehension?”

With a wry smile, Ocean shifts out of the way from the vent entrance. He gestures for Oona to crawl up to it. “Why don’t you see for yourself?” he asks.

Oona raises an eyebrow. “Ocean, I don’t have a degree in creature identification—”

Ocean holds up a hand. “Trust me, dude.”

Oona stares at him, before shifting towards the bunker entrance. She peeks outside.

A faintly glowing Canadian goose is knocking vials of highly corrosive acid off the tables. It opens its beak, and rows upon rows of jagged, sharp teeth reveal themselves as Allison screeches so loudly that Oona feels like her eardrums are about to rupture. 

Shrieking, Oona scrambles away from the entrance. 

Ocean nods, smiling wryly. “Yep. O’Jay’s smug face in my head is worse than our impending deaths, to be honest.”

“So that thing,” Oona says slowly, “Ate my crystal, and now it’s…” She trails off.

Ocean nods sagely. 

“HOW DO WE FIX THIS?” Oona cries. 

Ocean shrugs. “Well, we can’t. Not really. You’d think I would’ve done something if there was something to do, y’know?”

Oona sighs. She buries her head in her arms and sighs louder, as the goose outside knocks down a whole cabinet of beakers. 

She reaches behind her back and pulls out a grape Jolly Rancher. She unwraps it.

“Oona,” Ocean starts, a smile starting to light up his face.

Oona stops with the candy raised up in her hand, ready to pop it in her mouth. She raises an eyebrow. “What?” she asks. “If I’m going to die, I’m going to die happy.”

“No, Oona,” Ocean continues, his smile growing wider. He plucks the candy out of Oona’s hand, ignoring her protests, and stares at it as if it were a glowing gift from heaven. 

“You just saved our lives.”

“I don’t know why I didn’t think you could talk,” Olympia rambles. “I mean, like, you’re kind of… ducky. Like, not in a rude way! Your outfit is so cool, and you’re obviously also really cool, and—”

Otis stares at her like she’s insane.

“...shutting up now,” Olympia finishes awkwardly.

“Don’t like talking,” Otis mutters slowly, like he’s picking words out of a conveyor belt. 

Olympia smiles fondly. “I know.”

Otis looks at her, surprise in his eyes. His expression softens imperceptibly, but Olympia manages to catch it. 

Olympia has so many questions for him. Why’s he dressed like that? Why did the villain alarms go off? How did he get to the ceiling so quickly? How? Why? What?

But she isn’t going to ask them, because Otis talked to her. And she doesn’t want to ruin it. 

“I’m going to call Oona to see if she has the gadget ready,” Olympia says, nodding at Otis. “We’ll get you back to n—I mean, we’ll fix all of this, I promise.”

Otis nods, and Olympia unflips her badge phone and calls Oona. 

“Hey, Oona, are you—”

“NOT NOW!” Oona shrieks from the other end. “WE’LL— OCEAN WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”

A loud crashing reverberates from the other end.

“Chill out, dude,” Comes a smooth voice. “ ‘Sup, ‘Lympia? We got this.”

“We’ll call you back when we’re done,” Oona finishes rushedly. “If we’re ever done. BYE!”

She hangs up.

“Okay, good chat!” Olympia says, staring in shock at her badge. She snaps it shut, reclips it to her jacket, before shifting and making herself more comfortable. “Um, in the meantime, why don’t we get to know each other a bit more?”

Otis blinks at her. 

“I feel like I’ve done this before,” Okympia mutters. “Okay, so, I’m Olympia, I’m 11, and I love pandas,” She says. “And, um, I’m your partner! At the squad. We’re a great duo,” she says with a proud smile. “One of the very best.”

Otis tilts his head, and Olympia takes it as a sign that he’s interested.

“And this isn’t the first rodeo we’ve had with time travel! Like, there was this one time when we were still really new that Oona, the Head Scientist, dropped a gadget, and we all got zapped into the future. That was really funny,” She giggles. “You saved us all by biting into a rubber hotdog. And then we figured out the date and got ourselves back, just in time.”

She shifts and plucks a cattail off its stalk, pulling off little bits of it and watching the chunks she rips out burst into white puffs.

“And there was another time where Oona dragged us into her time loop! It took a while to get us out, and I honestly lost track of how many times the loop reset, but it was actually kinda fun going through the motions.”

She grins at Otis. “Oona learned how to lasso, and we learned how to play ping pong. And the feeling of finally getting back to time was amazing,” she sighs.

Otis looks at her with wide eyes. Olympia’s smile grows sad.

“Also, there was that one time where we accidentally messed up the timeline by trying to watch the day our boss got promoted—ha, that was fun. Not really, it was terrifying. But, what I’m saying is,” she says, putting down the now-bare cattail, “We’ll get through this. We have before, and we will again.”

His eyes are big and watery, and he looks more like a child than she’s ever seen. Olympia is suddenly and starkly reminded that this isn’t the stoic and serious Otis that she knows.

This is a kid . A smaller kid than she’s used to working with at the squad. A kid with no training, who was thrown into an unfamiliar place with unfamiliar people and was given no time to react or process. 

After a beat, Otis hesitantly opens his mouth. “...Promise?”

With a confident smile, Olympia nods. 

“Promise.”

Oona snaps her badge phone shut, shuddering at the sound of havoc outside. “Okay, what's the plan?” She asks, leaning forward and staring intently at the Jolly Rancher.

“We get Allison to eat this,” he gestures at the candy, “so she throws up the crystal and is weakened enough for me to capture her,” Ocean responds. “Grape flavoured candies have a chemical that geese hate . I almost fell asleep during the lesson… really glad I didn't,” he sighs in relief. 

Oona nods. “Okay. And Allison eats basically everything in sight, right?”

Ocean nods. “Should be easy enough to get her to swallow it.”

“Alright!” Oona says brightly. “So you go outside and feed her the candy, and I pick up the crystal when she spits it out. Easy peasy!”

Ocean laughs. “If you want to get eaten, sure!”

He moves out of the way so that Oona can crawl out. Oona stares at him like he’s insane.

“I THOUGHT YOU SAID IT’D BE EASY!” She cries. 

Ocean tsks and holds up a finger. “I said it’d be easy enough .”

Oona buries her head in her hands and screams. When she looks back up, she’s smiling slightly unhinged. “What do we do then?” She says in that calm-yet-incredibly-frustrated voice she does, in a near growl. 

Something slams against the vent of the bunker, the sound of crunching metal echoing through the walls of the bunker. Oona screams, while Ocean flinches. 

“Um, I think the solution’s gonna find us,” Ocean says hurriedly, snatching the candy off the floor. “Oona, say your final words.”

“I’VE ALWAYS WANTED TO DRINK THE GREEN STUFF IN THE FLASKS!” Oona shrieks. “THEY LOOK LIKE THEY’RE LIME FLAVOURED!”

Ocean stares at her with a raised eyebrow, barely flinching as Allison hurls herself against the door of the bunker again. “Seriously?”

“Yes, seriously! Come on, everyone’s wanted to!”

Ocean’s raised eyebrow raises even higher.

“According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way a bee should be able to fly. Its wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground,” Ocean mutters. 

“Oh, there’s NO way you’re making fun of my last words and then—”

“The bee, of course, flies anyway because bees don't care what humans think is impossible,” He continues.

The entrance to the bunker caves in, and the loud CLANG of metal reverberates through the entire bunker. Allison, with rows of far-too-sharp teeth that should not at all be there, waddles inside, snarling. Her eyes glow a deadly blue, and a faint glow emits from her stomach.

“This is the end,” Ocean sighs. “It was nice—”

“Okay, no,” Oona says. “No, I just got my license renewed. This isn’t happening. I WASN’T TRAPPED IN A TIME LOOP FOR 67 YEARS TO DIE TO A GOOSE!” Oona suddenly screams, surging up. She grabs the jolly rancher, grabs Allison by the neck, and drops the jolly rancher into her wide, teeth-filled mouth. Ocean stares in wonder.

“I HAVE SO MUCH TO LIVE FOR!” She cries, letting go of the goose before scrambling back towards Ocean. 

Allison immediately does whatever the goose equivalent of gagging is, before eventually hacking out a glowing blue rock, along with globs of slimy, chewed up grass. Oona picks up the crystal, going ‘ugh’ at the slime, before her eyes start sparkling.

She laughs.

“Ocean, we did it!” She cheers. “We got the thing and we didn’t die!

Allison honks and bites Oona, who screams.

Ocean stares at Oona in shock for a few seconds, before relief floods his expression and he untenses. Coaxing Allison off Oona’s arm, he high fives her.

“Way to go, dude,” he says, scooping the goose up in his arms and making his way towards the bunker entrance. He hops out of the very deformed opening and holds Allison tight, even though she flails and bites a little. 

Oona flops onto a desk to heave a breath.

“I’m gonna call Olympia,” she says, the wind suddenly knocked out of her. “Oh my god, I’m so glad this is over.”

Ocean nods sagely. 

“I survived the dare,” he whispers triumphantly. “Take that, O’Jay.”

Allison honks in agreement. 

“---So that’s why I think Prairie Smoke should be planted on all gardens everywhere, and Beebalm and Foamflower should replace any stupid grass lawns. On that note, I think—”

Olympia’s badge phone goes off. She glances at it, grinning.

“Otis, I think that’s Oona!” She says brightly. “This might almost be over!”

Otis does the little thing Olympia’s come to realize is the him equivalent of a bright, beaming grin. It’s not quite a smile, but he tilts his head to the left a bit and his eyes widen, and it’s honestly the cutest thing on earth.

“O—"

“WE DID IT!” Oona shrieks from the other end. “WE DID IT AND WE’RE ALIVE! Head down to the lab, I have the gadget ready!”

Olympia raises an eyebrow at the part about dying, but smiles excitedly at the news. She cheers. “We’ll be right down, Oona!” She shuts her phone and clutches her hands to her chest in excitement. “You hear that, Otis? Things can go back to normal now!”

Otis doesn’t react. He doesn’t do the happy thing.

He stares at her unreadably.

“Otis?”

His lips tighten imperceptibly. Olympia waits. Eventually, Otis finds the courage and opens his mouth to say something.

“I don’t… want to leave,” he mutters quietly. “I like it here.”

Olympia’s heart shatters in her chest. Otis looks away in shame, drawing into himself.

“I don’t want to go back,” he whispers even quieter. 

Scooching a little bit closer to him, Olympia mulls over what to say. “It’s fine! You can always join the Squad, you know? If you like it here, you’re always free to come!”

Otis shakes his head fervently. Olympia looks at him, confused.

“It’s not the Squad?” she asks.

Otis shakes his head again.

Olympia’s eyes narrow as she goes over her options. It might’ve been the sandwich, or the scenery, or the rooms or the fancy gadgets… maybe it’s the high stakes? 

She’s stumped.

The two of them sit in silence for a longer period this time, before Otis’s face twists up in something to the left of disgust and the right of embarrassment.

“It’s you,” Otis finally says, spitting out the words like they’re burning coals. He curls up into a ball and doesn’t say anything afterwards.

Olympia feels like she’s about to cry.

“Otis,” she says, choked up. 

He curls up even tighter. 

“Otis, you—you know we’re partners , right? At the Squad? We see each other every day,” she says softly. “You’re my best friend.”

Otis uncurls slightly.

“We’ll see each other again,” Olympia says. 

Otis raises his pinky shakily. “Promise?”

“I kept my first promise about getting you back home,” Olympia says. “I’ll keep this one too, just you wait.”

The two of them lock pinkies.

Otis smiles.

“Wonder what’s taking them so long,” Oona muses, looking over her gadget one last time. She squints at the control panel, flicking it experimentally. It sparks slightly, and she smiles in satisfaction.

“They’re probably having a sappy partner moment,” Ocean says knowingly. He pets Allison gently, ignoring how she viciously bites at his knuckles. “Knowing Olympia, she probably opened little Otis’s eyes to the light of the world, or something like that.”

Oona shrugs. “I guess.”

As if on cue, Olympia and Otis emerge from the hallways, Olympia looking somewhat misty-eyed while Otis looks mildly uncomfortable. Waving excitedly, Olympia bounds over to the lab and drags Otis along with her, blatantly ignoring the giant crater in the bullpen and the absolute destruction strewn about. 

“We’re ready!” Olympia calls, running into what’s left of the lab. “We—what happened ?”

Olympia stops in her tracks and raises an eyebrow at the mess of glass and various broken things that used to be the lab. Oona sighs.

“This little guy happened,” Ocean coos, holding Allison up in the same way someone would raise a very large hamburger. She honks happily. Otis makes a face at her. 

“Anyways,” Oona says happily, pulling out a huge, bazooka-like gadget and aiming it at Otis. “Say your final words.”

Otis flinches back and steps behind Olympia, shrouding himself from Oona’s view. Everyone turns to stare at her incredulously. 

It takes her a second to realize. “OH! No, I didn’t mean final words like that , I meant, like—last words before you leave the world. No, that’s terrible too. Ocean, tape my mouth shut.”

Ocean finger guns her. “You got it, dude.” He pulls a roll of duct tape out from behind his back with a ding and seals Oona’s mouth shut. She fist bumps him. 

Olympia steps out of Otis’s way and nudges him gently. “You ready?”

Otis stares at her, not responding. His hands are clasped tightly together.

He nods slowly.

“Mm-mmh,” Oona says, flipping the gadget on. It glows a vibrant, clear blue, a little orb of light collecting at the barrel end of it. “Mm-mmh mmmh-mm mmh.”

“She said to touch the little orb-thingy when you want to go,” Ocean translates.

Otis nods.

He takes a shaky step forward, before doubling back. Before Olympia can even register it, Otis barrels into her, hugging her and letting go in a split second, before sprinting towards the gadget and swatting it. The blue light grows in intensity, before getting so bright that Olympia has to cover her eyes.

When she opens them again, the Otis she knows is standing in front of them, looking incredibly disconcerted.

“That was weird,” he says flatly. “I don’t think that rock was edible.”

“OTIS!” Olympia cries, leaping towards him. She hugs him tightly, to the point that she thinks she hears Otis’s back crack a little.

“Um,” Otis wheezes. “What?”

Olympia lets go after a second. “Really long story, actually. You remember anything?”

Otis shrugs. “Not really.”

“Then I’ll tell you all about it once the bullpen’s cleaned up! Come on, we have, uh…” Olympia glances uncomfortably at the bullpen in absolute shambles. “An amount of work to do,” she finishes weakly. 

She takes Otis’s arm and leads him to the bullpen entrance, pulling out her Desk-Repair-Inator. She zaps a couple piles of sawdust on her way there. 

Ocean nods at Oona, smiling. “I’ll take Allison back to her enclosure,” he says. “You’ve got mad guts. More guts than me.”

Oona waves a hand. She rips the duct tape off her mouth, hissing in pain. “Pfft, that was nothing. I haven’t even told you about the garlic bread dimension.”

Ocean raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t question it. He smiles, stepping out of the lab and saluting Oona. “Alright, man. See you around.”

Waving back, Oona turns towards what used to be her flasks and test tubes of corrosive liquid. She sighs. Some of the liquids are already eating away at the tile. 

“Should’ve made him help me with the cleanup while he was still here,” Oona mutters bitterly. She pulls a broom out from behind her back, staring at the chaos in exasperation. Painstakingly, she starts sweeping.

“And then you HUGGED me! Isn’t that adorable! Little you was so cute, oh my gosh, it was like—”

“Olympia,” Otis interrupts, his face twisting up. “I need to tell you something.”

Olympia makes a questioning sound, putting away her gadget for a second. Ooh, that’s the serious serious face. She pulls out a newly repaired chair and sits down, gesturing for Otis to sit down next to her. 

He purses his lips, resting his chin on his interlocked hands and staring into the distance. A couple times, he opens and closes his mouth as if to say something, but nothing comes out.

“...Sorry,” he eventually chokes out. “This is hard.”

“Take your time,” Olympia chirps.

Otis clears his throat. Once, twice, three times.

“I was a villain,” he finally coughs out. “That’s why the alarms went off. That’s why the Xs were after me. You met me as a villain.”

He closes his eyes, as if waiting for something.

Olympia tilts her head to the side. Otis cracks an eye open.

“You’re… not going to call Security?” Otis mutters.

“Why would I?” Olympia gasps. 

Otis gestures vaguely. “You know, ‘Once a villain, always a villain’? I—I don’t know, I was so scared to tell you—”

“Otis,” Olympia says, laughing slightly breathlessly. “Otis, you’re not a villain.”

Otis tugs at his hair. “Olympia, I literally was.”

“No way!” Olympia cries. “Villains don’t—they don’t—” She struggles to find the words. Otis stares at her in the same way little Otis did, with wide eyes and his head tilted slightly to the left.

“Do you remember the conversation we had this morning?” Olympia says instead. “About how it’d be if we had met in the Academy?”

Otis furrows his brow. “Yes.”

“You said you were a little different,” Olympia continues. “And you were right. But that’s all you were. A little different. You weren’t evil, I know you weren’t.”

Sighing deeply, Otis digs the palms of his hands into his eyes. “You don’t know th—”

“I do,” Olympia insists. “Otis, I really do.”

The two of them sit in silence for a couple of seconds, Otis looking at something far off in the distance. After a beat, he tears his eyes away, and looks into Olympia’s.

“You told me you didn’t want to go back,” she says quietly. “You said you wanted to stay. And you did. We both kept our promises.”

Otis stares at her.

Hesitantly, he nods. “Okay.”

Olympia grins. “Glad you understand!”

Hopping back up, she whips out her Desk-Repair-Inator again and starts firing. “Now come on, we have to get this sorted out before the Xs come back. Everyone’s probably stalling them, at this point. If they come back from their extended tour to see the bullpen like this, then we’ll both be labeled villains.”

Otis nods stoically, pulling out his stationary-inator and zapping pencils and pens onto every desk Olympia repairs. 

“Also,” Olympia calls, sing-song, while the two of them are sweeping up the rest of the wood chips. “I won the bet!”

Otis raises an eyebrow. “What bet?”

“That we would’ve gotten along like a house on fire,” she responds, grinning brightly. 

Otis thinks for a bit, before shrugging. “I guess you did.”

After a long while (and a LOT of sweeping), the two of them wipe away their sweat and lean against a wall, catching their breaths. Agents are already filing back into the bullpen at the all-clear, and the Xs, after half an hour of painstaking investigation, were eventually shooed out by literally everyone working at the precinct. 

“I think we deserve lunch,” Olympia groans, rolling her shoulders. “C’mon, I never did get to finish my sandwich.”

“I love sandwiches,” Otis says immediately. 

Olympia smiles, the picture of little Otis scarfing down a baguette fresh in her mind. “I know you do. C’mon, you can get yours with extra bread.” She laughs, before heading towards the tube lobby, gesturing for Otis to follow.

Otis pumps a fist in victory, before tailing Olympia.

The two of them enter the tube lobby, the indigo light casting an almost ethereal glow over the two of them. 

Olympia stops, suddenly, staring at Otis. Something about the blue light is making her sentimental.

“I’m so glad you’re back, Otis,” she says, crouching into the tube entrance. Her voice wavers and cracks at his name.

Otis takes a second to respond, but he glances over at Olympia…

And he offers her the same smile he did when he was just a kid.

“It’s good to be back,” he says softly.

Before Olympia can respond, the two of them are encased in scarlet and whisked away.