Yes, I know, I know...It's been awhile. But what can I say? Everyone else seems to apologize for not updating regularly. I apologize too, but honestly we all seem to be in the same boat. I hope you are all having an awesome Christmas break. I'm baking and eating WAY too many Christmas cookies. No regrets. 

This is from Otis POV. Enjoy :)  

I had never thought something like this would ever happen to me. I mean, sure I knew I worked at Odd Squad which guaranteed that strange stuff was going to happen all the time, but why did it have to happen to me? Being stuck inside Olympia's computer, possibly forever, was not what I had in mind for the schedule of today.

I stared at my surroundings in despair. The pinkish-red hexagon background was so familiar and yet, I had never wanted to be this close to it. I glanced around the sides of the screen trying to find some means of escape. Off to the sides of the computer there seemed to be mirrors because I saw the image of myself, Olympia, and the desktop background repeated an infinite amount of times until it disappeared into oblivion. So weird. I wasn't very knowledgeable with computers to begin with but this was not what I had expected to see.

I turned my mind back to the problem at hand. Olympia was having a conversation with the two IT workers who had, thankfully, come up with a possible means of getting us out. Something about fixing a server. A server? Like in tennis? Or in a restaurant? It must have been some fancy computer term that I didn't understand. Technology had never been my specialty.

"I don't know what most of that means, but I like the last part." Olympia smiled hopefully up at the IT workers.

O'Beth nodded professionally, "We'll give it our second best shot."

"Second best?"

"It's always good to have somewhere to go."

As the IT workers ran out of sight, I turned distractedly to Olympia. "How do we know that they know they can get us out of here?"

"They're great at their job. You could just see the confidence gleaming in their eyes." Olympia smiled uncertainly at me. She hadn't convinced me and I could tell she hadn't convinced herself either. I didn't reply; after all, a faint hope is better then no hope at all.

After what felt like hours of waiting the two IT workers had only collected one of the three replacement parts that they needed. As they ran off to the creature room to tackle a blob I let out a sudden outburst of frustration.

"We've been stuck inside this computer forever."

Suddenly Olympia's eye's lighted up as an idea entered her mind, "Wait, we're not stuck in any computer. We're stuck in my computer. We can look through my photos!"

Great, pictures. That's just what I needed, "Why do I feel more trapped now."

Most of Olympia's photos consisted mainly of Olympia and the different places she had visited some of which we had visited together on different cases. After the first five photos or so I stopped paying attention. I kept glancing at our surroundings trying to figure out if there was a way out of here or not. In all honesty some little rebellious part of me was actually enjoying being stuck inside a computer with Olympia, not that I wanted to let her know that.

"And this is a picture of me and Cody." At the sound of Olympia's voice mentioning the name of a person and not another historical landmark or city, I turned my neck around so fast that I think I temporarily injured myself.

The picture showed Olympia sitting outside smiling broadly with her arm wrapped around a grinning red-haired boy who looked about the same age as her if not a year older.

A horrible boiling feeling rose in the pit of my stomach and I felt the sudden urge to punch something. Sadly there was nothing around to punch so I simple clenched my hands into fists and spoke to Olympia through gritted teeth, "Who's Cody?"

"What?" Olympia was oblivious to the fact that anything had happened and she had continued speaking while I was occupied with my thoughts.

"Who is that boy in the last picture you showed me?" I forced myself to sound a bit more relaxed. Why was I suddenly so tense?

"Oh, Cody." Olympia flipped back through the pictures to the one of her and the smiling red-head. "That's my cousin. Why do you want to know?"

Her cousin! Ha! Relief literally flooded every part of my body and I instantly relaxed. "No reason. I just thought I recognized him from somewhere."

"Ok..." Olympia didn't seem convinced; and glanced suspiciously from me to the picture and back again before shrugging and continuing the presentation on her pictures.

Once again I began to drift off in my thoughts and tuned Olympia out until she was simply muffled background noise. I really did try to listen to her, but she said so many words so fast that it was impossible to process all of what she was saying sometimes. Besides, I was busy focusing on the fact that the boy in the picture was just her cousin; nothing more.

I heard my name through the static of the background noise and I instantly concentrated once more on what Olympia was saying. "That's of you and me. I forgot about this one. Well, it's not very good anyways." Olympia hastily tried to hide the picture she had been talking about.

Now I was interested. Why would Olympia hide that picture from me? In fact, I couldn't remember a time when we had ever taken a picture together. I don't really like pictures.

"Olympia what picture was that?"

"Oh...it's nothing...it's all blurry, you wouldn't want to see it." Olympia tried to keep the picture turned away from me but I reached out and snatched it from her.

The picture was of when Olympia and I had returned the moon to its proper place in the sky; definitely one of our harder cases. However, someone had drawn something below the moon in the picture. It was a large pink heart inside which were written the words "Otis + Olympia"

I felt my face turn as pink as the heart and I glanced up at Olympia who was staring determinedly at the floor.

"Did you..." I swallowed to clear my throat. "Did you write this?"

"Write what?" Olympia glanced at the picture. Her eye's widened in mock surprise. "Me write that? Pfttt...Why would I write that?"

I could tell something was up. "If you didn't write it then who did?"

"I...um...well why does it matter?" Olympia was struggling to grab back the picture.

"Because if someone puts my name and your name in a pink heart together I want to know who they were and why they did it." I carefully kept the picture away from her.

"Fine..." Olympia glanced from me to the picture and back again before mumbling in the fastest voice possible. "Idrewtheheart."

"What?"

Olympia took a breath and spoke more distinctly. "I drew the heart, and the names, and everything. It's just it was such an awesome case and you were so great holding on to me to make sure I didn't fall or anything. I asked Ms. O for a picture of the case but I didn't mean for you or anyone to see it."

"Oh...alright." I looked back down at the picture and I couldn't help smiling a little. I wasn't a fan of the color pink but for some reason I didn't mind how my pink name looked next to Olympia's both connected by a large plus sign. It was almost like a math problem only it was unfinished. There was no equal sign.

I had a feeling that Olympia was both embarrassed and worried about having me see her "artwork" I cleared my throat and tried to break the awkward silence, "You can show me the rest of your pictures if you want to."

Olympia's head shot up; looking mildly surprised. "Ok" And as if nothing had ever happened she continued with her manual picture slideshow.

Unknown to her, I slipped the moon picture in my pocket jacket. Instead of tuning out what she was saying, this time I paid attention. And most of her pictures were fairly interesting.

After helping choose a decent picture for her desktop background we started randomly browsing the internet. Olympia said she was in a cat mood and so we were searching anything involving cute cats. Personally I didn't mind too much, as long as she didn't start looking for cute ducks. Because there is no such thing as a cute duck. Trust me.

"Otis! I found something absolutely adorable." Olympia squealed. She pointed to a file labeled Virus Cat. "Sick cats are soooooo cute."

I reached out and pressed the file for her. Instantly annoying music began to blare from everywhere and a cat with one spinning paw appeared behind us. Like I said before I'm not very knowledgeable when it comes to technology, but loud spinning cats usually aren't a good sign. After calling the IT workers over we learned that we had downloaded a virus. Sort of like a cold for the computer. Only it's a cold that could possibly end up killing the computer and us as well.

As Olympia and I waited anxiously for the IT workers to finish fixing the server, I absently fingered the picture in my pocket. A thought that I couldn't believe hadn't come to me before, stuck me full in the face. Olympia obviously really liked someone. And that someone was me. One of the greatest, most wonderful feelings of blissful contentment stole over me and I couldn't help but allow a large grin to plaster itself on my face. She liked me! Me...Olympia liked me...

"Otis why are you smiling?" Olympia half screamed in my face. The annoying and quickly multiplying cats brought me sharply back to reality. I had to distract Olympia. I hated seeing her frightened.

I noticed another file labeled Dog virus. Yes, I know it had the word virus in it, but it was the second word out of the two and it wasn't capitalized. It had to be a picture of a dog sneezing or something. Olympia would love that.

"Hey, Olympia you like cute dogs, right?"

"Totally." She smiled at me.

"How about this?" I reached out and downloaded the file. Instantly I knew it was a mistake.

In union with the annoying cat song an equally annoying dog song began to bark out it's own tune. And just like the cats before them, dogs with spinning paws began to appear. We were slowly being crushed into nothingness by robotic cats and dogs.

The IT workers were apparently working as fast as possible to get us out of the computer in time but nothing could get me out of here fast enough. As the dogs and cats got larger we became smaller until it was harder and harder to even see out of the computer screen.

In desperation I grabbed the lid of the Trash icon and lifted it over Olympia's head; trying in vain to protect her. It was no use. We were going to be crushed to death and there was nothing I could do. In desperation I turned to Olympia and shoved the picture of us saving the moon into her hands. "This is yours. You can have it back. Thanks for showing it to me."

"You're not embarrassed about it?" Olympia seemed genuinely surprised as she shouted to be heard over the noise.

"No" I smiled at her. In truth I was a little embarrassed, I could feel the heat coming from my face after all, but it was a good kind of embarrassed feeling.

"Otis, you keep the picture. I want you to have it." Olympia put the picture back in my hand.

I was about to thank her but the noise had grown so loud that there was no way I could have even heard myself. Impulsively I reached out and gabbed her hand. She stared at me in surprise for half a second before gripping my hand tightly in her own. Hand in hand we allowed ourselves to be swallowed by the deafening noise.

From a great distance I heard the shout of "Escape!" Instantly I felt myself being pulled forward at the speed of light. I couldn't feel Olympia's hand anymore and I panicked. Where was she? Suddenly my feet hit solid ground and a second thump on my left told me that Olympia had made it out too. Headquarters and two relieved IT workers came into focus. "Good work computer department." I breathed with joy. It was great to be back in a world that was not made of tiny pixels.

"But you're dealing with that." O'Seth pointed in fear at a computer generated paw-spinning dog that had somehow managed to escape with us. After getting the dog back where it belonged (it took us about an hour and a lot of duct tape) We decided to head home. I said goodbye to Olympia as both of us were whooshed away in our separate tubes.

As I watched the world fly past beneath me I dug out the picture Olympia had given me. Just seeing our names connected by the bold plus sign made me smile. One day I hoped the equation would be complete and that Otis + Olympia would equal something. I could only imagine what that something would be and for some reason the large pink letters of L-O-V-E kept flashing in my mind.

Otis + Olympia = Love

It was a pretty good equation.