Humans and magic fish are not alone in the universe. There are all sorts of aliens out there. Weather Fish’s death came at the hands of one such alien race. The ‘Smarties’.

Smarties looked pretty much how you'd expect aliens to look. They were little green men, about 160cm tall on average, with round, smooth, oversized heads and large black eyes that took up most of their faces. They had no visible ears, 2 verticle slits for a nose, and a horizontal slit for their mouth on the bottom of their faces.

They prided themselves on intelligence over everything else. They had mastered space travel, reversed global warming, and even cured the common cold while humans were still living in caves. High intelligence doesn't mean that they always made good decisions, however. For example, their naming sense was quite terrible.

The incident took place on their home planet ‘Roundsville’ in the planet’s capital ‘Bryan’. Bryan was the location of the Smarty’s greatest annual event: the ‘Invention Convention’. It was a high profile, extravagant gala, where the brightest Smarty minds would come together to show off their newest and greatest inventions.

This year, the Invention Convention had invited the magic fish to attend. A recent trend in Smarty technology was to try to emulate the fantastic magics performable by the fish. Magic fish generally weren’t interested in science at all as science and magic never mixed well. So all turned down the invitation, except for one: Weather Fish.

Weather fish was a fantastic, bright yellow, hammerhead shark. She was a proud fish. Too proud in fact. Crazy proud. Her favourite pass time was to brag about how amazing weather magic is to anyone who would listen. She had self-nicknamed herself ‘The Queen of Weather’. This should have been the Smarty’s first hint on what not to do around her. Obviously, threatening her position as ‘Queen’ would be a bad mistake. But as mentioned before: high intelligence doesn't necessarily mean good decision making.

On the secret magic fish danger ranking list that the Smartys had, she ranked number 6. The list was not so secret as Divination Fish had spotted it years ago and told everyone. She hated it. She felt she deserved to be higher. The weather was something that affected the lives of everyone on a daily basis, surely it deserved a spot in the top 3, right? Showing off her powers and hopefully raising a few ranks was high on her priority list during her visit. But that wasn’t her main purpose.

No, she would pretend to praise the Smartys for their wonderful inventions, and impress them with her magic all the while she would be on the lookout. The true reason she was there was that she was secretly terrified that they would make a machine that could do what her magic could. This had happened to laser fish. The Smarty military had developed powerful laser weapons based on her magic and now their armies were all equipped with them. Weather fish almost vomited at the thought of this happening to her and considered this a huge insult to Laser Fish and her magic. Goddess have mercy on whoever decided to invent a weather machine. And the worst part about it was that Laser Fish still ranked higher than Weather Fish on the Danger ranking list.

“High intelligence clearly has no bearing over good list decision making,” she grumbled to herself

And so she attended the Invention Convention with eyes wide open and a fake smile on her fish face. She swam through the air, carefully inspecting each machine she saw. She passed an empty area that had apparently been reserved for an absent team of scientists named ‘the little girl’s team’. She scoffed at the terrible name and moved on to the next display. It was manned by one Smarty standing by a metal sphere with several antennas sticking out. She swam over to talk to the man.

“What does this charming little thing do?” She asked him.

High Intelligence doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll make good decisions. The Smarty smiled wide, “Miss Weather Fish! I have been waiting eagerly to show you my invention. I couldn’t believe my luck when I heard you would be attending today! Behold! This,” the Smarty pulled a level and a rain cloud formed above the sphere, “is a weather machine!”

“Oh…” Was Weather Fish’s reply.

She spat out her wand and pointed it at him. Bolts of lightning shot forth from the wand, destroying the weather machine, its creator and a dozen unfortunate souls who happened to be standing too close. Smarties screamed and fled as Weather Fish floated ominously over the debris. "A weather Machine?!? How many saw it? How many other machines here are weather machines?!?!" she screamed.

A convention security guard levelled a laser pistol towards her, “F-f-f-freeze!” he shouted

Weather turned her wand towards him and they both shot at the same time. The guard was, of course, turned into a smoking corpse as thousands of volts passed through him. But surprisingly, Weather Fish was also injured. The laser had left a small round burn mark on her face. Her pride burned in indignation, “How dare you use lasers against me!” she screamed. More guards were arriving.

“EYE OF THE STORM” she spoke the magic words. Hundreds of dark clouds filled the convention centre. A lot of Smartys were about to die.

Weather Magic is dangerous. Weather’s spell [Eye of the Storm] would turn her into… the eye of a storm. The worst possible storm imaginable. Snow, hail, lightning, everything, all at once. However, It’s not the kind of dangerous that can destroy a planet overnight. That's the kind of magic that gets you into the top 5 of the danger list, but still, quite dangerous. Despite her being the only magic fish around, weather magic was not the most frightening magic that had happened in the city in the last 24 hours. That had happened about 30 minutes away by hovercar in the Hungry Hippo University’s student dormitory.

It was a magic that could kill from light-years away, end all life in the galaxy, and even break reality itself. The incomprehensible, maddening force kept peasants and kings alike, awake in fear at night. This was the power of the magic that had manifested in the university. A tendril of energy from beyond the void that bridged universes had snaked its way into a dorm room and then it used its unfathomable power to turn off an alarm clock.

STEP 1: MESS WITH FRED’S CLOCKS

Frightening stuff that destiny magic. It had only two limitations. One, It had to be discreet. If somebody knew that destiny magic was manipulating certain events, then they feel compelled to fight against it using their free will. To defy destiny and forge your own path was the nature of all living things. This defiance was possible because of the second rule, the magic wasn’t allowed to mess with someone's free will. Free will was absolute and the future wasn’t pre-written despite the magic's name. You always have a choice, no matter how hard it is to make. That was it for the rules.

Fred had stayed up so late last night panicking about his team’s display at the invention convention so it was totally conceivable that he forgot to set his alarm and had slept in. Luckily, because otherwise, the universe would have probably found some way to knock him unconscious or break his bones or something. Whatever it took to get him to miss that event.

As for the rest of his team, their excuse for not waking up wasn’t as good, “Dammit Fred! You’re the oldest! You're supposed to be the responsible one and wake us up! We’re late for the Invention Convention because of you!” shouted the little girl who had kicked down his door.

“You didn’t set an alarm because I’m older?” Fred asked in disbelief.

“Of course not! I’m team leader, I delegate minor tasks and focus on the big picture!” Einstein, Fred’s team leader stamped her tiny feet to emphasise her words. She was a genius among Smarties. At age 7 she invented her first fusion engine, at 9 an artificial intelligence that made the perfect sandwich, and now at age 10 she was team leader of the Hungry Hippo University’s most valued team of young scientists: the ‘Little Girl’s Team’. An appropriate name since it was her team and she was a little girl.

Fred was indeed older than her, at age 18. It irked him to be working under such a brat, but her genius was undeniable. This was a great opportunity to kickstart his inventing career. There was something about the team name that bothered him but his racial desensitised naming sense disallowed him the ability to figure out what it was exactly.

As for their third member, “What about Edison? He and I are the same age!” Fred protested.

“Your birthday is 2 months earlier than his! You're still oldest and so you should be in charge of alarms!” Einstein rebuked stubbornly.

She was making Fred mad. Ideas for an alarm clock that leapt off the table in the morning and stabbed the user with needles to wake them up started filling his mind. He shook his head to clear away the thoughts.

This was Fred’s supernatural power at work. Fred was a mad scientist, literally. When he became angry, he received supernatural inspiration for some of the evilest inventions conceivable. These inspirations were often accompanied by groundbreaking ideas that could potentially advance Smarty science years forward if removed from the evil machine they're attached to. This is how he had landed a spot on the team as his intelligence was average otherwise.

Fred took a deep breath and started acting as the oldest should, “Ok Einstein, I’m sorry. We can still salvage this setback. Let’s go get Edison and try to rush over to the convention while we still can.”

They hurried over to the room of their third member, Edison, and found him sitting on his bed playing with his smarty phone. He looked up, “Oh, hey guys, is it time to get ready?” He greeted them, waving a robotic hand.

Edison was a Smarty equivalent of an 'otaku'. His singular focus had pushed an obscure scientific field forward as not many others ever bothered with it to the degree he did. Edison wanted to be a cyborg. Robotic body parts were kind of redundant in modern Smarty society as cloned body parts and strength enhancing suits already existed. But since he was performing groundbreaking research, he earned a spot on the team. Fred suspected it was some kind of fetish thing. He tried not to judge.

“Edison you're awake? How long have you been up?” Fred was surprised.

“Only a few hours, why?” He looked down, tapped at his phone a few times, then frowned, “Oh… damn Fred! Why didn’t you come wake me up?!”

Fred thought of a fantastic assassination device that could be attached to a smarty phone. It would release a thin carbon thread, invisible to the naked eye, that would wrap around the user’s neck and pull tight, decapitating them. His face began turning yellow in anger.

“We don’t have time for this. We need to get the machine onto the truck and go to the convention now!” Einstein fumed.

“Oh, speaking of the convention. We probably don’t wanna go downtown right now... I was just watching the news." He turned his phone to show them the screen, "Weather fish is going nuts and killing a bunch of people down near the convention hall.”

Fred shivered at the mention of the magic fish. Then he realised something was off about what Edison had just said. He grit his teeth and asked, “Edison, you were watching a news report about the convention when we walked in and you didn't realise we were late?!”

Ignoring Fred, Edison continued, “It looks like she wants to destroy the whole city, they're saying. Thinking about it, we're in the city, right? Shouldn't we get out of here before she makes it to the university?” Edison got up and pressed the button to open his window. His mechanical eyes telescoped out of his head to look into the distance, “Oh na, we’re fine. Can see a bunch of laserjets flying towards the centre now.” he jumped back on his bed and went back to playing with his phone.

Fred couldn't believe that this is what constituted being a ‘genius’. Einstein had pulled out her smarty phone too and was humming while watching the news. For now, everyone had forgotten about the deactivated alarm that had saved their lives.

Above the convention centre, Laserjets fired countless beams of deadly lasers down upon Weather Fish. She returned fire, filling the sky with forks of lightning that knocked jets out of the sky. They fell like leaves in autumn. Dozens of tornadoes ripped the city apart around her. Rain, wind and snow blocked visibility making her hard to pinpoint. Despite all her enormous power, she was slowly being overwhelmed. Each successful blast of laser fire burned her scales and damaged her wand a little further. Her pride and fury blinded her to the danger. She couldn't and wouldn’t stop now for anything. She kept blasting jet after jet out of the sky until finally, her wand snapped. The magic seeped out of her and lasers tore her to pieces.

In death, her magic became unstable and exploded out across the galaxy. The weather everywhere became unpredictable and chaotic. The snowfall on Lake fortune was a mild example of what was going on elsewhere. Ironic that in her death, Weather’s magic had become the most feared and respected it had ever been. To many, it seemed like the end of days.

Magic fish on Siren were able to quickly realise what had happened and retrieve her body via portal. Her funeral was prepared as Gate Fish went out to retrieve any missing fish.

And now back in the present Divination and Time Fish had just finished telling the others about Weather’s rampage and subsequent subjugation.

“I have a question,” Destiny fish called out, “those jerks are called the Smarties, right? What do they call it when a Smarty is smart? Is it like, a smart Smarty?”

“Goddess above Destiny! Could you shut up and not make jokes about Weather’s murderers?!” Kinetic Fish fumed.

“No… I wasn’t…” he spluttered.

“Yes, they are called smart Smarties,” Metal Fish interrupted Destiny’s panic, “It’s not right what they did. Just because she lost her temper and set her magic upon the masses. That's no excuse to kill her. Her life was more valuable than theirs.”

“Are we really expected to believe that the Smarties didn’t premeditate her murder? They didn’t think of the consequences of flaunting a weather machine in front of her? Do they think we’re stupid!?” DNA Jellyfish spoke, growing angrier and angrier with each sentence.

“I hate them. They have turned my magic into a weapon and killed my sister with it. I’ll never forgive them.” Laser Fish’s voice was cold.

“It’s Unnatural!” shouted Normal Crawfish.

“I have an idea.” A deep voice cut in and silenced all the others. World Fish was a tiny, blue and green pufferfish. His scales looked like an ocean planet with green continents. The eyes of the other fish stared wide at him. When World Fish had an idea, big things were about to happen.

“Alone, Weather Fish destroyed most of one city. Imagine what we could achieve together. My idea is simple: They removed Weather Fish from the universe; so we remove them from the universe.”

A moment of stunned silence passed over the magic fish as they processed the insane evil that World Fish had just suggested. There were trillions of Smarties, spread out over several worlds throughout the galaxy. A genocide for a death.

Fish exchanged meaningful glances and smiles slowly grew wider and wider. As one, they all broke into cheers and shouted “FOR WEATHER FISH!!”