I need to offer all of you my deepest heartfelt apology for not updating in centuries. My family and I just moved and we didn't have internet for a week so that was a pain. This chapter is a tiny bit longer than normal so I hope that kinda makes up for it.

Well, I hope you enjoy the chapter and in the words of Olympia, keep on keepn' odd!  

Phones, phones, and more phones. A cacophonous chorus of calamity met my ears. Man, I love alliteration. It just makes describing a situation way more fun, you know? Ok, ok, I'm getting off topic. Back to phones.

The phones in the maintenance worker's office where literally ringing off the hook. Why one maintenance worker had over a hundred phones in her office was beyond me. I mean this is Odd Squad after all but still, there is a fine line between odd and just plain crazy (actually Otis believes that there's a very thick line between odd and crazy; I almost agree with him). 

In desperation, Otis and I rushed to the nearest phones we could lay our hands on and began answering them. I was barely listening to what the shouting voices on the other end were demanding of me. I had now come to the realization that I had no skills in this area of work. If only it would all just stop. 

There was too much noise, the ringing, the shouting of the people on the phones, me shouting back at them, Otis shouting into his phones. My stress levels, which had been climbing steadily ever since I got this job, peaked and out of pure helplessness I hung up the phones that had been yelling at me and turned to Otis.

My mind was desperately trying to concoct some reason as to why we were being made to suffer through this. Why had the day been so normal and then so full of ringing phones? No, this was too weird to be my life. Too weird...wait that was it!

"Partner, I figured out how to fix this."

Otis looked eagerly at me, "How?"

"All I have to do is wake up." It was so simple. I couldn't believe I hadn't seen it before. Whenever strange things like this happened only in an out of control fashion it was usually because I was having a nightmare.

Otis, however, didn't seem to understand, "What?"

"This is a nightmare. This is a nightmare." I gestured to the hideous phones surrounding me. "This is a nightmare." I looked straight at him and before I could stop myself I blurted out, "You're a nightmare!" I hated to admit it, but at that moment considering everything that had happened in the last few days, I almost, pretty much, totally meant ever word of it. I had taken Ms. O's advice and tried to act normally toward him but in stressful moments like this, I couldn't help myself.

A loud beeping buzzing noise sounded overhead and this seemed to confirm my suspicions, "That's my alarm clock now. I'm probably asleep at my desk. This is going to feel so good when I wake up."

Ms. O popped out of thin air (I'm almost positive she has teleportation powers although Otis says she's just really fast) and crushed my dream theory, "That's not your alarm clock. That means headquarters is about to self-destruct."

Self-destruct? This couldn't be happening. Otis seemed to be thinking the same thing and we glanced briefly at each other before yelling a unified "WHAT?"

Ms. O, in turn, looked both of us in the eyes, "Tell me you've been pressing the un-self-destruct button every ten minutes?"

Again Otis and I spoke at the same time (I love it when we do that) "No."

"It's in the south control room. Let's motor."

To make a long story short or shorter at least, Otis and I crawled through a sea of popcorn and using our truly incredible math skills (not to brag or anything) were able to press the un-self-destruct button before everyone was blown to pieces. I have to admit, it was pretty awesome. Stressful because the fate of Odd Squad rested in our hands, but still awesome.

For some reason, twenty minutes or so after we pressed the un-self-destruct-button, every agent in headquarters seemed to mysteriously disappear. It was like they all suddenly wanted to play a giant game of hide-and-seek or something. 

"Otis, Olympia, I want you to stay and clean this up." Ms. O ordered before turning to walk away.

"Wait, Ms. O, isn't anyone else going to help us?" There was way too much popcorn for only two people to clean up.

"I had everyone else evacuate. That thing is still making popcorn and it could hurt someone. I think you and Otis can handle it." She nodded confidently at us before striding away and ending all further discussion. For some reason I felt like something was up. I wasn't quite sure what, but I had the strangest feeling that Ms. O was purposefully leaving me alone with Otis. 

"I think we should try to fix the popcorn machine before we start cleaning any of this up." Otis broke the awkward silence that followed Ms. O's exit.

"Ok." I silently crawled through the popcorn after him. As we made out way toward where the half-buried machine was still spouting popcorn, my mind was in turmoil. Here we both were in headquarters, alone (except for Ms. O who was probably in her office). Should I talk to him about what happened last week with him and Oona working late in the lab together? Would that be too awkward? Would he be angry? I, strangely, had no idea what to say. This rarely ever happened to me and I had no idea how to handle it. I had to say something!

"Um, Otis..."

"Yeah?" He stopped crawling through the popcorn and turned back to look at me.

"I think...well it's just...have you tried any of this popcorn?" Come on Olympia you can do better then that. I mentally slapped myself.

"No." Otis looked confused. "Have you?"

"Yeah. It seems sort of burnt. Don't eat any if you value your taste buds."

"Thanks for telling me." He nodded and continued to make his way toward the popcorn machine.

Why was I acting so awkward? It was just Otis after all.

At last, we reached the popcorn-spouting machine and, staying out of the range of fire, started to examine it. Otis found the problem within seconds. I guess all that short term maintenance experience paid off. Apparently a blob had gotten inside the machine and this had somehow clogged it up.

Otis took the circular top off the popcorn machine and we each took hold of a side, "Olympia, on the count of three we'll scoop up the blob and run it to the creature room. Ready? Now!"

With great effort and a lot of blue slime, we were able to successfully move the blob from the popcorn machine to it's cage in the creature room. "Why didn't Ms. O send anyone to help us? I mean Ocean would have been really useful right about now." I gasped, holding the blob cage doors down.

"I don't know. Maybe she thought we could handle it by ourselves. And, I mean, we did just handle it by ourselves." Otis was equally out of breath.

I nodded but privately I thought it would have been helpful to have someone else help us tackle the blob especially after everything we had already been through today.

As we stood in the dark creature room partly out of breath (blobs know how to fight) and covered from head to toe in blue slime I made up my mind to say what had been brewing in my head for hours.

"Otis, I was just wondering...what...what do you think of me?"

Otis looked completely mystified and even slightly scared. "What...what do you mean?"

"I mean what do you think of me compared to say...Oona for example." I know that wasn't very subtle but hey how else am I going to find out?

"Why do you want me to compare you to Oona?" Otis looked extremely uncomfortable. "You two are completely different. Oona's good with gadgets and I suppose she's interesting to talk to sometimes, but she's really awkward and I'm kind of awkward and that combination doesn't go well together. You're more fun to be around, you have one of the most positive attitudes I've ever seen and you always know what to say." Otis paused the looked at the ground.

"And about what happened last week, I'm really sorry I ever said that you only care about yourself. I have no idea why I said that....You are always excited to help other people. If anyone's selfish it's me. Also, this is more words then I usually say in an entire month and no one but you could ever make me talk this much. Oona is interesting to be around sometimes, but I would choose you over her any day. I took me longer then it should have realize that and...I'm sorry."

Otis abruptly stopped speaking and looked completely exhausted; it had probably taken a lot of effort to say all that.

My insides were literally exploding with joy. He liked being around me! He liked my positive attitude and he actually said that he would choose me over Oona any day. I knew I probably should have still been angry at him but this was too good. For the second time in one hour I had no idea what to say (I hope there's nothing wrong with me).

After a few moments of silence in which I stood smiling broadly and Otis stood looking tired from having talked so much and nervous as if he had said something wrong, I was at last able to force out some words.

"Thanks Otis. You're pretty great too. And I don't mean that you're only great right now, you're great all the time. Even when you're not trying very hard to be great you're still great. Which is great!"

Otis looked at the floor and mumbled an embarrassed 'thank you' I was still able to see the pleased smile that flashed across his face.

"Maybe we should go get cleaned up, I mean we are covered in blob which is pretty cool. But coolness and cleanliness don't go together sometimes."

Otis nodded and looked me directly in the face for the first time since we started this conversation. I couldn't help myself and let out a snort of laughter.

"What?" Otis flushed red. "What did I do?"

"It's just you look hilarious with blob all over your face." I laughed again. This had been a long day and seeing Otis's face covered in blue glowing slime made me crack. I couldn't stop myself.

"Well your face is covered in slime too." Otis tried to look as if his feelings had been hurt but could help himself and started to smile.

In an unexpected movement, Otis reached forward and carefully wiped some slime off my cheek. As if he just realized what he was doing, Otis stopped, looked horribly embarrassed, and drew his hand back.

"Otis, I don't mind. Thanks." I started wiping at my own face with my sleeve and he in turn wiped his. Because of the fact that my sleeve was also soaked in slime I wasn't really getting much if it off. 

"Did I get it all?" Otis asked hesitantly. 

"You missed one spot right here." I reached forward and started wiping the slime off his upper forehead. "There, now you've got it all off your face. The rest of you is nothing a little shower won't help. Or a powerful hose." In all honesty, he still had a lot of slime on his face but so did I. Like I said, it's nothing a powerful hose won't fix. 

As we made our way toward the giant mess of popcorn in the main body of headquarters we kept wiping bits of blob off each others' faces. We had, of course, both missed a lot of it and while this might of been weird or awkward with anyone else it seemed comfortable, almost natural with Otis (if wiping blob off someone's face can be called natural). I knew that all the turmoil of the past few weeks was forgiven and that Otis had made his choice. And it was obviously the right choice.

I just hoped that Oona wouldn't take it too hard. But knowing Oona, she probably had no idea anything was happening to begin with. In fact even if she did know she probably wouldn't care.

"Agents!"

We spun around to find Ms. O looking down at us from her balcony.

"We fixed the popcorn machine Ms. O but did you want us to clean up the rest of this mess?" Otis questioned in his professional tone.

"No, I'll get someone else to do it. You two can go home and get yourselves cleaned up. Good work."

Approval from Ms. O was a big deal for me and I smiled up at her. I opened my mouth to tell her about the blob that had been the source of the problem but she held up a commanding hand and interrupted me.

"You can thank me later, and you're welcome."

"Thank you...." I was so confused and as we walked toward the tube lobby I whispered to Otis. "Thank her for what?"

As Otis shrugged, I was almost sure I heard the voice of Ms. O behind me answering my question, "For giving you a push in the right direction."