Fanfic / Olive's Last Partner

Olive's Last Partner is an Odd Squad fanfic written by lilac-kat. It serves as the prequel and sequel to Ships Ahoy!.

The story follows Olive and Oscar, who find themselves trapped in the rapidly-flooding Boiler Room when going to stop a rampaging Blobisite, as they must face their actions and make up as ex-lovers and as ex-friends.

It's notable for being the first Odd Squad fanfic ever to be created, being published on December 29, 2014, a little over a month after the show premiered.

It is a main installment in the Ships Ahoy! 'verse.

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This fanfic contains examples of:

• Absurdly Long Wait: The post-conclusion scene of "Picture Day" shows Olive and Otto waiting for Oscar for nine hours while he takes pictures, even though they were supposed to take him out for lunch. They stay behind only because Olive promised that she and Otto would take Oscar out to eat, and although she offers Otto a chance to go home, he turns it down because he promised Oscar as well.
• A Good Way to Die: Although subverted as they don't end up actually dying, Oscar tries hoisting Olive up so she doesn't drown in the flood, only for her to tell him that his efforts are being wasted. He's well-aware of that, but he wants to die with the agent he loves doing the job he loves, and having spilled everything about his actions to Olive.
  Olive: You ready?
  Oscar: Honestly? No.
  Olive: Neither am I. For Odd Squad?
  Oscar: For Odd Squad.
• And I Must Scream: While she was a statue in "Dance Like Nobody's Watching", Olive apparently was completely unaware of her surroundings. It serves as good news for Oscar, who had given her a kiss on the cheek before leaving with Otto to disable the final booby trap, but it's still quite horrifying.
• And Then I Said: After Olive, Oscar and Otto have a good laugh over realizing that the door to the Boiler Room was open the entire time and Olive and Oscar could have simply walked out, the scene cuts to the trio relaying the story of what happened to Oprah, with only a "...and that's what happened" being given.
• Animated Actors: The epilogue reveals most every single agent in Precinct 13579 to be one of these, as Olive and Otto watch Oscar being filmed for his interview video. Later on, the trio film scenes from the PBS Kids version of the ending credits (which feature the credits squeezed into the upper-right corner while the Main 4 try to chase down the show's logo) and the beginning of an "Odd Squad Needs You" commercial with them and Oprah. There are also mentions of Olive providing voiceover work for the "Odd Moments in History" segments, Oscar recording the Training Videos (in addition to helping Oksana with Headquarters tour videos), and Oscar and O'Connor sending in the "Odd Reports" segments they had filmed together previously, among a couple other things.
• The Atoner: Oscar feels massive guilt for what he's done to Olive and all the mistakes he's made while he was friends with her. Sure, he would try to talk things out with her to atone for his actions, if he didn't have such terrible communication skills.
• Back-to-Back Poster: A variant with a different kind of advertisement (a commercial) — Olive and Otto stand back-to-back with each other during filming, with Oscar popping up in between them. This isn't the case in canon, however, as each main character is the only one onscreen when giving their "I joined because..." lines.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted. All three agents appear dirty and scruffy from the Boiler Room incident, with Otto being covered in Blobisite goo, Oscar with bent glasses and Blobisite goo on his face, and Olive with her corkscrew ponytail tangled and sticky while also having a painful lump on the side of her head from where she was hit. All of them are also soaked to the brim in orange juice.
  • Also averted with Oprah in the epilogue following the events of "Life of O'Brian", as she walks out of the tube lobby completely ragged but successful in her mission to properly handle the laser chicken egg.
• Big "SHUT UP!": Olive gives Oscar one of these when he tells her that he knew they were going to die in the Boiler Room a while back but wasn't going to say anything.
• Bizarre Taste in Food: The food pill that Oscar eats has him tasting fish fingers, celery, and banana custard in rapid succession (but no orange juice this time).
  • After the events of "Mystic Egg Pizza", Oscar walks in on Olive and Otto about to stomach their third egg salad pizzas after a long vomiting session and asks to taste the pizza. When he does, he ends up liking it and takes every single pizza off of the duo's hands as an early birthday present.
• Blob Monster: Blobisites, which are cousins of blobs, are parasitic and clog up boiler systems, sucking up warmth from pipes.
• Boss's Unfavorite Employee: Inverted. Olive thinks that Oprah is playing favorites with her agents and favors Oscar over anyone else, since it's also implied that she believes Oprah is cheating on Oscar. She's not, and she doesn't play favorites with anyone either.
• Broken Tears: Olive does this when she confides in Oscar about how much she was hurt by his actions, to the point where she ends up crying on his shoulder.
• The Chain of Harm: The reason why Olive doesn't want to tell Otto about Oscar being partners with her is because she doesn't want to hurt Otto the same way that Oscar (supposedly) hurt her.
• Classified Information: The whole incident concerning Todd's Face–Heel Turn and his attack on Precinct 13579 is so confidential that not even Olive herself, his former partner, knows the full story of what happened to him — a ruling given by Oprah, who is the only one to know about Todd's past. Anyone who does happen to know about the story isn't allowed to talk about it, as the subject is taboo to the point where one can't even mention his name.
• "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: After they give their Not-So-Final Confessions, Oscar tries to apologize, but Olive tells him that he's said enough and that both of them are in the wrong for not communicating with each other better.
  Olive: I guess we're just really bad at telling each other things.
  • Later on, when Otto rescues them, they ask him how he got inside if the door was locked. He tells them that the door was never locked, and they realize that they could have escaped the Boiler Room the entire time they were trapped inside. Oprah later states that she forgot to tell Oscar that Owen removed the locks on the doors in Precinct 13579's Mechanical Rooms.
  Oscar: So, all that time...we could've just...left?
  [long pause]
  Olive: We...are...idiots!
• Crazy Cat Lady: A variant occurs with Oscar having his house full of bunnies due to a "bunny storm" that came through Toronto last winter. Lucky for him, Olive likes bunnies and agrees to come over and hang out at his house regardless.
• Dangerous Workplace: Anyone who has watched Odd Squad knows just how dangerous and just how deadly the organization can be to agents. In this story, however, Oprah never realized that fact until she saw two of her agents (potentially three) nearly die, and comes to the realization that had they died, the precinct would have been shamed and dishonored, and she would have been forced to step down from her Director rank — which she would have done willingly.
• Deadpan Snarker: Oprah has some snark to dole out to Otto, who doesn't know what boilers are.
  Oprah: Now, the problem is that something very odd has happened to the pipes that carry hot water all through the building. Focus your attention on the very bottom floor, over here. What do you see, agents?
  Otto: Well, I see that all of the pipes seem to be coming from there. They all connect to those huge tanks, see?
  Oprah: [rolling her eyes] Thank you, Agent Otto. Those are the boilers that store the water for heating.
• Death Glare: The cameraman filming Oscar's interview video shoot Olive and Otto these kinds of glares while they're behind the camera and are making comedic remarks — not that they care, though.
• Deer in the Headlights: When she sees Oscar using a pie to scare the Blobisite towards Otto, Olive lets out a scream and then becomes near-paralyzed with fear, only able to take a few more steps back and crash into the main boiler, which creates a hole in it that quickly ruptures.
• Didn't See That Coming: During "How to Interrogate a Unicorn", Olive smugly asks Oscar if she and Otto can lock Oscar in a tiny room with a robot as part of her bitter envy. Oscar's quick to smile and say that he's been waiting his whole life for someone to ask him that question, and Olive notes that the plan didn't work as she intended it to.
• Didn't Think This Through: Oscar decides to use his Speedup-inator gadget on the quarantine room that Olive and Ms. Baker are skipping in to get rid of the Skips because he's worried about the former. Dr. O is against it, saying that using the gadget on a person with the illness currently being cured hasn't been medically tested, but he fires the gadget anyway. Although it eventually works, Dr. O tells Oscar that she now has to spend two-and-a-half hours watching them skip until they get better — time she doesn't have due to being backed up with medical work that Odell, her assistant, must now take care of.
• Emotionally Tongue-Tied: Oscar hears Olive's Not-So-Final Confession about how she felt when he abandoned her, and he ends up at a loss for words as she breaks down crying. He eventually decides to answer with his own Not-So-Final Confession.
  • In Chapter 5, Oscar tries to tell Olive that he meant what he said in the Boiler Room as part of his confession, but he can't find it in him to form a full sentence and keeps cutting himself off. Luckily, Olive realizes what he's saying and states that she spoke from the heart as well.
  • After the events of "Skip Day", Oscar ends up at a loss for words once more when he hears about how Olive nearly fell to her death by skydiving without a parachute when she had the Skips. Instead of trying to speak, however, he goes for hugging her tightly instead.
• Et Tu, Brute?: Olive gets hit with this hard when Oscar begins abandoning her, and she definitely does not take to it kindly.
• Everyone Has Standards: Olive may hate Oscar's guts, but she still has a shred of sympathy for him in regards to him possible getting fired. It's part of "it" being hidden inside her — although she won't admit it, she won't go as far as abandoning Oscar when he needs help because she's not that mean.
  • Otto is a Big Eater who can stomach quite a lot of food and has a large appetite for a lot of things, but when it comes to egg salad pizzas, that's his limit — he gets sick and starts vomiting after eating only one-and-a-half of them.
• Extremely Short Timespan: The entire story, barring the epilogue, takes place over the course of a single hour.
• Food Pills: Sometime in the past, Oscar invented these after reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Olive is revealed to have kept one, which she gives to Oscar in the epilogue.
• From Bad to Worse: Olive admits that things went from seeing Oscar making excuses to run off and finding him working on a Shrink-inator in the lab, to him outright leaving her high-and-dry when it came to cases.
• Frothy Mugs of Water: Olive, Otto and Oscar all go out to Club 24, a local nightclub. Instead of having hard drinks like beer or wine — the fanfiction is rated K+ — Oscar and Olive sip on sparkling white grape juice, since they're kids.
• The Gadfly: Oscar teases Olive by inviting her for a (supposed) not-date at Ms. Baker's bakery because the place is having a half-off sale on pies, only for her to grow terrified and then begin chasing him around Headquarters. Apparently he's been picking up on Otto doing the same thing.
• Get Out!: Olive angrily tells Oscar this after she calls Oprah and he tells her about his missing gadgets. Otto's quick to scold her about how mean she was.
  Olive: You can leave now, Oscar. We can handle the rest of this. [pause as Oscar doesn't move] I said you can leave!
• Go into the Light: Right before dying, Olive and Oscar see a bright searing light before everything turns silent.
• Group Picture Ending: Averted. It's not truly the end of the story, but Olive and Oscar take a selfie of themselves while on their way to shower themselves after the Boiler Room incident, still soaked with orange juice and still looking scruffy. It sits on Olive's desk, and she looks at it following the events of "Life of O'Brian".
• Harmless Freezing: Olive and Oscar are frozen solid by Otto using his Freeze-Ray-inator on the orange juice flood, but they don't suffer any ill effects due to managing to get out of the ice before it could do serious damage to their bodies.
• Heel Realization: Olive has one following the events of "How to Interrogate a Unicorn", after lamenting and berating Oscar both in her thoughts and in her normal dialogue.
  Olive: [thinking] Maybe I have been too hard on Oscar...
• Help, I'm Stuck!: Otto becomes stuck under Oprah's juice bar in one flashback to "The One That Got Away", and Olive tries to pull him out by yanking his legs to no avail.
• Holding Hands: In Chapter 5, Olive and Oscar realize that they're holding hands with each other when talking about the incident in the Boiler Room, and it causes Olive to blush as she moves her hand away on instinct.
• Implausible Deniability: Orchid passes by Oprah's office, and the Director asks her to fetch her a juice box as her supply has "mysteriously vanished". Apparently Orchid can't see the numerous empty juice boxes that litter the floor of her boss's office.
• Instant Ice: Just Add Cold!: The Freeze-Ray-inator is a gadget designed to freeze things regardless of the weather or temperature.
• Involuntary Dance: Olive skipping in circles to get rid of her Skips illness has shades of this, as she is forced to skip for an entire week, and doesn't feel the need to drink, eat, sleep or go to the bathroom while she is being cured.
• IPhony: Precinct 13579 uses OddPads, which are pretty blatant references to iPads.
• Ironic Echo: One of the comments that Olive keeps thinking of is "Trust Ms. O to only pay attention to her favorite agent", and it's often when she's feeling jealous and bitter. In Chapter 5, Olive thinks of the comment again, but in a more positive light this time around.
• Irrational Hatred: Whoo boy, does Olive have some fiery-hot things to say about how much she hates Oscar, and it reflects in both her dialogue and inner thoughts.
• It's All My Fault: Oprah takes full responsibility for the Boiler Room incident, stating that she should have known how dangerous Blobisites were and she should have sent Olive and Otto with more backup in addition to them backing up Oscar.
• Jaw Drop: Olive and Oscar have this reaction when Otto informs them that the door to the Boiler Room was unlocked the entire time.
  • Otto has this reaction to Oscar finding egg salad pizza to taste good, and then Oscar becomes slack-jawed when Olive offers the rest of the egg salad pizzas to him as an early birthday present.
• Laugh of Love: Olive sees Oscar messing up his interview video while she's behind the camera, and has to hold back laughter. Otto making comedic remarks behind the camera with her doesn't help, either, and once filming is done, she and Otto collapse in a fit of giggles.
• Man Bites Man: At one point, Oscar accidentally used the Pudding-inator on Orchid's sandcastle, and in retaliation, she bit his hand — particularly his index finger.
• Manly Tears: As Oscar accidentally lets slip that Olive had a previous partner, he distracts Otto by pointing at Orson, giving him enough time to slip under the table and start crying.
• Meaningful Look: Olive shoots Oscar one of these when he asks the camera if he makes the same mistakes twice. He sees it and reluctantly confesses that he does.
• Memento MacGuffin: Olive is revealed to have kept a food pill that Oscar made, despite her hating him at the time he created them. She gives it to him when he remarks how hungry he is from filming, and he is surprised to learn that she still had it.
  Oscar: Y'know, it's funny. I thought I ran out of those pills a long time ago. Where'd you find this one?
  Olive: I saved it. From your first batch.
  Oscar: [thinking] From my first batch... [normal] But that was over a year ago. I thought you... [pause] Then that means...even when you hated me...
  Olive: It never really went away.
• Musical Number Annoyance: In the epilogue, Olive asks Oscar what gadget he accidentally misfired during his interview video, and he tells her it was the Soundcheck-inator. As if on cue, the "Take Away 4/Gonna Add 1" remix begins playing faintly somewhere, and Olive, being the one that hates Soundcheck, gives a groan.
• Near-Death Experience: Olive and Oscar nearly die by way of drowning in orange juice, and they make sure they let Otto know of it.
  Olive: Otto...we nearly drowned a minute ago. It was terrifying. I thought for sure we were going to die. Do you realize that?
  Otto: Yeah, I do. I was scared, too. I almost panicked and couldn't hardly focus. It was all I could do to think to use the Freeze-Ray-inator. If I hadn't...
  • At the end of "Skip Day" (as told in this story), Olive tells Oscar about how she nearly died while she had the Skips.
  Olive: Oscar...I almost died. Again.
  Oscar: [thinking] Really? She didn't tell me this. [normal] W-what happened?
  Olive: The last thing on my to-do list yesterday was to go skydiving. But I skipped the part where I should've put on a parachute. If Otto hadn't gotten the jetpack and came after me...I would've fallen to my death...
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Olive's mind becomes nearly paralyzed when she sees the pie Oscar uses to scare the Blobisite away, and she backs up enough to crash into the main boiler and create a hole in it. It's only when she finds orange juice leaking onto her shoulder does she turn around, and once she finds the Repair-inator she dropped, she tries to use it on the boiler. However, the gadget doesn't work, and before she gets a chance to tell Oscar, the boiler bursts and she gets slammed in the face with orange juice.
• Not a Date: Subverted. Oscar offers to take Olive to Ms. Baker's bakery after filming all of the promotional is complete, and when she asks him if he's taking her on a date, he blurts out that he isn't but that he heard Ms. Baker is having a half-off sale on her pies, causing her to grow upset with him. It's then shown that Oscar was just teasing her.
• Not-So-Final Confession: Olive and Oscar both give one to each other while trapped in the flooding Boiler Room.
• Oh, Crap!: Olive has this reaction when she goes to use the Repair-inator on the fissure in the boiler, only to find it doesn't work. She doesn't get a chance to finish telling Oscar before she's attacked by a flood of orange juice.
  • She later has the same reaction when she realizes just what is going to happen to her and Oscar as they're trapped in the Boiler Room amidst rapidly-rising flood waters of orange juice.
  Olive: Oh my God. We're going to drown here!
• Power Source: The heating and cooling systems used to be powered by water, but was changed to orange juice because Oprah liked the smell of it in the walls.
• Rage Breaking Point: Olive comes close to hitting hers when Oscar demonstrates what Blobisites do, but she doesn't actually hit it until Chapter 3.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Olive gives a brief but impactful one to Oscar in Chapter 3 when she hits her Rage Breaking Point.
  Olive: [mocking Oscar] I wish, I wish, I wish! Let me tell you what I wish! I wish you had just let me go with Otto, and we would've been finished by now, not about to drown trapped in the basement! I wish Ms. O had never liked you enough to let you work in the lab, and leave me to solve cases solo when I had only just joined the Squad! No, you know what I wish? I wish you had never been my partner!
• Repression Never Ends Well: Olive had been keeping bitterness and rage pent up inside her ever since Oscar's promotion to Lab Director, and when realizing that she's about to die in the Boiler Room with Oscar, she ends up snapping at him, telling him that she wishes he had never been her partner to begin with. Oscar can barely muster up any words as Olive is only left with agonizing pain and loss that had scarred her past for so long, which the anger and jealousy had kept at bay.
• Right on the Tick: In Chapter 1, Otto calls the exact time Oprah is going to call him and Olive to her office, at exactly 2:23:11, and says that Olive owes him a trip to the donut room.
• Rising Water, Rising Tension: When Olive regains consciousness in Chapter 3, she finds that the orange juice from the boiler has reached her waist and is rapidly rising. Even worse, she and Oscar are trapped in the Boiler Room due to the door locking itself if something bad happens.
• Saying Too Much: While being filmed for his interview video, Oscar starts talking about the secret mission he helped out with in "Best Seats in the House". Otto asks Olive if he should be talking about it, to which Olive shakes her head. Oscar seems to realize it as well, and decides to crack another joke by saying that talking about the secret mission is twenty-six mistakes. That serves as the final straw for Olive, who can't stop herself from laughing when the camera stops rolling.
• Skewed Priorities: Lampshaded by Otto in Chapter 1.
  Olive: You wanted to see us, Ms. O?
  Oprah: Yes, I did. Something very odd has happened. Well, no, not odd. More like disastrous. Here, at Odd Squad Headquarters.
  Otto: [muttering] Lemme guess. There's no more juice boxes left?
  Olive: Shush!
  • Otto later plays it straight when Oprah tells him and Olive that no heating or cooling will mean that the food rooms in Precinct 13579 will be affected. Olive and Oprah are both quick to shoot him devastating looks.
  Otto: What? We all need to eat. And we can't eat if all the food is melted or frozen or rotting into compost!
• Sneakers of Sneaking: Inverted in Chapter 5 with Oscar's sneakers following the incident.
  Olive: [without turning around] Have I ever actually seen you wear the grey T-shirt before, or is it just me?
  Oscar: No, you're right, I never liked them. [surprised] How did you know I was here?
  Olive: [facing him] Your shoes. They squeak when you walk.
  Oscar: Oh. Funny, heh, I never noticed.
• Taken for Granite: Just as in "Dance Like Nobody's Watching", Olive is turned to stone when she accidentally triggers the second booby trap by stepping on the wrong tile. However, unlike in the episode, the story shows how Olive got turned back to normal — Oscar uses an Un-Statue-inator on her which turns her back, and she ends up so drained of energy from the ordeal that she can't walk without assistance and has to be led to the hallway where an agent is chipping away at the ice block that Oprah got trapped in when triggering the first booby trap.
• Tap on the Head: Subverted. The force of the juice hitting Olive's face sends her flying across the room, where she collides with the wall and her vision grows hazy before she is knocked out. When she regains consciousness sometime later, she tries to speak, but Oscar tells her she got a bad hit to the head, and it's eventually revealed that a painful lump has grown on the side of her head from the collision.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: While Otto is in another room preparing for the Blobisite to come to him, Olive is forced to work with Oscar despite hating his guts, and it's made pretty clear that she doesn't like it one bit.
  Olive: [thinking] Trust my partner to leave me alone with the person I loathe.
• Tempting Fate: As Olive is stuck with Oscar and attempting to stop the boiler from bursting, Oscar tells her not to turn around. Naturally, Olive turns around, and lets out a scream when she sees him with a pie in his hands, which he's using to scare the Blobisite into Otto's room.
• Trying Not to Cry: When giving her Not-So-Final Confession to Oscar, Olive feels herself start to cry and tries to blink the tears back. She, of course, fails, and begins to cry, going from a stream of tears to suppressed sobs.
• Useless Security Camera: Averted. Precinct 13579 has perfectly-functioning security cameras placed all around Headquarters, which is how Oprah becomes aware of the Boiler Room incident. However, Olive and Otto are unaware of the cameras until she tells them in Ships Ahoy!.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: The epilogue makes sure to describe in detail how Olive and Otto manage to vomit after the conclusion of "Mystic Egg Pizza", where they were given thirty-seven pizzas by Delivery Doug and Delivery Debbie following them joining forces to open an egg salad pizza business, and Oprah forced the agents to eat them all (with Olive stating that she was about to throw up before there is a Fade to Black to end the episode). It's explained that Olive and Otto don't even get halfway past their second pizza before they begin puking on Oprah's carpet due to what they're eating and how much they're consuming, to which she responds by giving them trash bins and leaving her office, ordering them to clean up their vomit and not to come out until they're done.
• Wham Line: The end of Chapter 5 has one that reveals Oprah knowing about the entire incident through one way.
  Oprah: [thinking] Security cameras.
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: The epilogue showcases the lives of Olive, Otto, Oscar and Oprah, as well as the rest of Precinct 13579, after winning their very first Jackalope Award in "The Jackies".
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Olive has this reaction when she asks Oscar what Blobisites are parasites of, and he responds with "Boiler systems, of course!"
• You Have to Believe Me!: Oscar says this of Olive when spilling to her about his backstory and the reasoning behind his actions.

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