The machine in front of the two fish powered down, having successfully launched its payload.

“No!!!" Screamed Destiny Fish.

"What is it, Destiny?! What just happened?!" World Fish yelled at him.

Eyes wide, Destiny Fish robotically turned to his buddy, "It copies Shattered egg… World Fish’s Shattered egg,”

Time Fish felt his stomach turn to ice, “You’re joking. The Smarties managed to copy THAT spell?”

“Yeah, dude, that spell! We gotta go! We can't stay here,” Destiny Fish started flying upwards, turning back to urge Time Fish to follow.

Time Fish stayed still, however. Now that he knew what was happening, [Time Sense] informed him of how much time they had left. He stammered, "W-w-we don't have enough time. We're all dead. Unless…” He drifted off, calculating something in his head, "Bro, I think I can buy you enough time. You can make it if you go now. Run!"

"What are you talking about dude? C'mon…"

"THERE'S NO TIME!! GO NOW DESTINY!!!" Time Fish shouted.

Destiny Fish flinched. He had never seen Time Fish raise his voice like that. With one last pleading look behind, He wordlessly began swimming away as fast as he could.

Time Fish smirked and swam hard down to the ground. He slammed into the soil and screamed the magic words, “Frozen Moment!”

From his wand, a bubble of time spread out covering the ground. It rapidly expanded outwards in every direction. Within moments it covered thousands of kilometres, coating the entire planet in a translucent red-orange time bubble.

Outside of the bubble, birds flew, Smarties fled, and time flowed as normal. But inside time was completely frozen; nothing moved anywhere, right down to the planet's unstable core.

Time fish felt his magic power drain at a frightening pace. With a small bubble the size of a fish, he could freeze time on the insides for centuries. But on an entire planet, his vast magic power would drain dry in one minute, and thirteen seconds; his [Time Sense] told him so.

A content smile spread across Time Fish's lips. That was all the time his bro, Destiny Fish would need. He kept hold of his wand to maintain the bubble and waited.

🏃🌍⏰

All over the planet Siren, the magical fish were concerned by the sudden retreat of the Smarties. When the world began to tremble and they felt Time Fish's spell wrap around the planet, they knew: something terrible was happening.

Gate Fish opened a portal to where he had left Dream and Music fish, but neither were there anymore. Cursing, he opened a portal to space where Divination and Laser Fish were, “Tell me where everyone is! Something is wrong. I'm gonna get them out of there!”

Divination Fish didn't ask questions, instead going straight to work. Looking deep into her glowing esca, the first fish she located Mental Fish, hidden deep in the ocean.

A portal opened beside her moments later, “Mental Fish, come through! Where’s Narcissist Fish?” Gate fish called through the portal.

Mental fish startled at the sudden voice. She rushed through the portal and hid behind Laser Fish. One word appeared in their minds, “Dead.”

They felt numb shock wash over them. Laser Fish soothed Mental Fish while the others got back to searching.

Divination Fish next found Sky Fish and Gravity Fish. They swam through the portal, severely injured, but alive.

Yeti Fish was recovered next, he informed them that DNA Jellyfish and Pain Fish went chasing after the fleeing Smarties into the sky. As there are no flying Yetis, he had stayed behind.

“Oh no… I found Normal Crawfish and Virus Fish,” Divination informed them and relayed the location to Gate Fish.

“Why ‘Oh no’?” Gate Fish asked, opening the portal.

Deep underground, in a shield bubble that had saved them from being frozen in time, Normal Crawfish shook Virus Fish, “Don’t play around babe, say something!” She cried. Tears ran down her face

Virus Fish’s one remaining eye stared blankly. The life completely drained from them.

The portal opened beside them, and Gate Fish peeked through, “Goddess,” He exclaimed, seeing Virus Fish’s corpse.

Normal Crawfish looked up with teary eyes, “Gate Fish? Virus won’t wake up. Help!”

Gate Fish cast a bubble around the two and gently pulled them through his portal. The gathered fish inspected Virus Fish, but it was too late, he had succumbed to his wounds.

The group was startled when Virus magic suddenly exploded out of his body into the universe.

A perfectly healthy man on Earth was strolling down the street, minding his own business. He coughed, "Damn, must be catching something," he murmured and continued on his way. He had indeed caught something. He had just become patient zero for the world's next pandemic, COVID-19.

Divination Fish snapped back to her senses after the initial shock from the magic explosion. She quickly began searching again. Suddenly, her esca lit up like a beacon. She jerked her head back and shielded her eyes from the blinding light,

“What the flipper was that?!” she asked.

💀💀💀💀💀

Hidden in a canyon, Music Fish sang to calm the shivering Dream Fish. He looked down and saw the time bubble below him pop. Moments later, fire consumed them.

Dream magic exploded out of Dream Fish and into the universe.

On a pristine beach, somewhere warm and tropical, a random lady who has no relevance to the story, stood at a beautiful wedding altar, handmade from driftwood. She looked into her beloved’s eyes and he looked back with a dreamy smile, filling her heart with warmth. It was perfect, this was her dream come true.

The priest standing in front of them asked, “... And do you Sarah Beara take Darren McClarren to be your lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold, from this day forth until death do you part?”

“I… I…I BWEEEERRGGG!” Without warning, Sarah vomited rancid green chunks all over her beautiful, white, wedding dress. Gasps rang out from the onlooking crowd.

The altar chose that moment to break under their weight. Sarah, Darren, and the priest all fell gracelessly into a pile of sand and driftwood. One particularly sharp piece of wood somehow managed to stab right through the priest's heart, killing him instantly. Gasps turned to screams as the crowd freaked out.

A stray dog ran over, seemingly from nowhere, and urinated on Sarah's already ruined dress.

Upon seeing this, the maid of honour inexplicably decided it was time to reveal her big secret. She stepped forward and shouted at the groom, “Darren, I'm pregnant! It's yours,"

Darren looked up at her and replied, "But you can't be pregnant with my child: I'm pregnant with yours!"

Anyways, enough of that nonsense. Needless to say, Sarah’s dream wedding was ruined. As were countless other dream vacations, dream homes, and dream cars all over the universe.

💔💔💔💔💔

Music magic exploded out of Music Fish’s body and into the universe.

On Earth, in a suburban garage somewhere, The lead singer of some band that has no relevance to the story had an idea. He turned to the other members of his band and said, “Guys, maybe we’ve been going about this all wrong! Garage bands are so overdone, that’s why no one likes our music! We need to try something new!”

“Like what?” the drummer asked.

The singer held up both hands, “Hear me out: Ska, meets dubstep, meets classic country and western!”

“...Wow… that’s… WOW! Why hasn’t anyone ever thought of that before? Now that you say it, it's like, such an obvious match. Hell Yeah! Let’s do it!” the cowbell player cheered.

The rest of the band joined his cheer and thus the Ska-Steppy Western music genre was created.

🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶

DNA Jellyfish and Pain Fish raced into space. Originally they were chasing their enemies but once the planet exploded behind them, they became the ones being chased. The Smarties were redoubling their efforts to finish off the remaining magic fish now that they were caught off guard.

DNA Jellyfish formed a cocoon out of his remaining minions to shield himself from the lasers raining down on him from every direction. He had a very limited supply of space-faring minions and those he had were being decimated every second. He thrashed about in fury as lasers pierced his soft flesh. A portal opened behind him and he was yanked through.

Pain Fish was not as lucky, he had no spacefaring minions. Lasers tore into him. He screamed the whole time, enjoying the pain but not enjoying dying.

It was over in moments. A laser pierced right through his skull and finished him. His lifeless corpse continued to be riddled with more laser blasts until pain magic exploded out from his body and into the universe.

On Earth, millions of people stubbed their toes at the same time. It hurt like bloody hell!

🪨🦶🪨🦶🪨🦶

One minute, thirteen seconds after being cast, Time Fish's spell had ended. The time bubble burst and the worldwide shaking resumed. Time Fish relaxed, smiling up at the sky towards where Destiny Fish had Fled and said, "Live well Destiny Fish. Love you, bro," Moments later, fire consumed him.

Time magic exploded out of Time Fish’s body and into the universe. A lot of things happened in an instant.

Time froze.

Time reversed a second.

Time resumed again.

Time travel became possible.

A single soul travelled back from timeline A to timeline B.

Reality nearly shattered from the paradox.

Time froze again.

Timeline A ceased to exist.

Time magic disconnected from reality.

Time travel ceased being possible.

Finally, time resumed normally.

⏰⏰⏰⏰⏰

Thousands of lasers pierced World Fish. His movements slowed and his vision grew blurry as he bled profusely from countless small wounds all over his body. He felt the tides of battles turn as a lot more enemies suddenly arrived, coming up from the planet and adding their attacks to the already overwhelming number he had been dealing with. He grit his teeth and kept swimming. Vowing to never stop his rampage until every one of them was dead. Hundreds of thousands of spaceships had already been destroyed on his path. What was a million more?

Metal Fish looked to be struggling too but for an entirely different reason. The damage she took from the laser blasts was quickly repaired every time she absorbed more metal. However, the problem was that each direct hit also heated her up a little more. Millions of tons of superheated, molten metal drifted off her body like golden-red tentacles. Now any ship caught in her magnetic field melted before crashing into her. But as to her condition underneath all of that slag, it was anyone's guess.

Kinetic Fish was a blur of death and destruction. There was so much debris around now that she felt frantic and overwhelmed in launching it all. She never stopped, because she couldn’t stop. She knew that if she ceased moving, even for a second, she would be torn to pieces. One in a thousand lasers aimed her way still managed to hit their mark. The pain was excruciating but she pushed through it.

Amid the chaos, space lit up. For a brief moment, all the carnage stopped as both sides looked down at the source of the light. The planet Siren shattered and exploded outwards like a brilliant flower, glowing the colour of lava.

Shock, awe, fear, happiness, disgust, pride. Everyone who looked at the ruined world felt a different emotion.

World Fish looked upon the remains of Siren, his birth planet and home for several millennia and was surprised by how little he felt. It was just another world. Gone now. His biggest sadness was that he wished there were more smarties closer to the planet. He would have very much liked to see them melt away in the fires of Siren's core. With that thought, an idea came to him. There was a way to turn Siren’s destruction into a good thing and it relied on emotions.

“Kinetic fish! I have an idea," He called out behind him, “I need you to turn me around and bring me close enough to touch Metal Fish!”

"What? You’ll burn!" She replied.

“I know, it’s ok. Hurry, please!”

With no idea what to expect, Kinetic Fish zoomed around to the far side of World fish and pushed him towards Metal Fish. Her magic allowed him to reverse direction despite his gargantuan size and speed. Before the two titans collided, she arrested all their motion just before they hit one another, scorching her fin on the molten metal tentacle of Metal Fish in the process. Metal Fish and World fish gently touched each other. World Fish’s scales burned.

World Fish raised his voice so that Metal Fish could hear him through the molten mess covering her “Metal Fish, I’m going to ‘global scale’, when I give the signal, cast ‘liquid metal’. Do you understand?”

Metal Fish’s muffled voice called back, “WHAT? THAT’LL DESTROY SIREN! WE CAN’T!”

“Oh, damn. She doesn’t know. She’s so covered in slag that she’s blind,” said Kinetic Fish.

World Fish didn’t have time to explain; she might not even believe him if he told the truth. He had to lie to his friend, “Don’t worry, Time Fish is going to protect it. I’m casting the spell now, Get ready.”

“WAIT! NOW?! ARE YOU SURE?” Metal Fish Shouted.

“Global Scale!” World Fish called out the magic words. His body shrank as all of his magic poured into Metal Fish. As he grew smaller and smaller, lasers hurt more and more.

[Global scale] was a support spell that used his magic to increase the size and scale of another fish's next spell at the cost of reducing the size and scale of World Fish. He shrank smaller and smaller from the size of a moon to that of an asteroid, to that of a peanut. An absurd amount of magic charged into Metal Fish.

“Now Metal Fish! Now!” the tiny pufferfish shouted.

“LIQUID METAL!!” Metal Fish screamed the magic words.

Although it was a crazy powerful spell, [Liquid Metal]’s weakness was that its Radius was no further than a kilometre away from Metal Fish’s body. That was no longer a problem. World Fish had been so enormous when he cast [Global Scale] that now Metal Fish’s spell covered a good portion of the solar system.

The Smarties had brought everything they could to eliminate the magic fish threat once and for all, billions of spaceships, laser jets, tanks, soldiers, machines, and weapons. All held together by metal.

The spell shot out in all directions. Metal turned to liquid. In the silence of space, everything fell apart.

⭐🛸⭐🛸⭐🛸

Destiny Fish fled. Fire consumed the planet behind him and he fled. Tears fell from his eyes, lasers burned his body and he fled. He closed his eyes, screamed, and fled.

He swam through debris, liquidated spaceships, and Smarty corpses. He didn't stop swimming. He didn't stop screaming. A portal opened up in his path. He swam straight through it. He kept swimming hard like his life depended on it. Then, he ran head-first into a solid object.

He opened his eyes and saw what he had bumped into, Laser Fish, “It’s ok Destiny Fish, you're ok,” she whispered.

“Time Fish… He…”

“I know. It’s ok you’re safe.”

Destiny Fish wept.