📖Oh, damn… Wally died. Guess he can’t be our main character anymore. Not to worry, we have others!📖

Replacement Main Character 1:🍕Destiny Fish🍕

A couple hours earlier, Destiny Fish floated at the bottom of Lake Fortune. He stared at a large block of marble sitting on the lake bed while twirling a chisel about in his mouth, “Hey little statue,” he whispered to the marble, “What are you under all that stone?”

The marble block didn’t respond to his question.

Destiny Fish had magically carried the stone over from a nearby quarry last week with the hope of getting back into sculpting. However, inspiration remained elusive.

Destiny Fish was pulled from his stone-whispering when he felt a tug at his side. A red string tied around his fin was the culprit, “Oh ho ho? Will you look at that? Looks like Wally; the man, the myth, the legend himself, is back from his lunch break! I’m gonna go play for a bit, statue-dude. While I’m gone, don’t go thinking that I’ve forgotten about you. We’ll figure you out when I’m back, ok? Hehehe. Here, hold on to these for me would you?” He put his chisel down by the block of marble and then spat out his magic wand from within his body and placed it next to the chisel.

Following the red string, he found Wally paddling out onto the lake in his little tin boat. Wally soon found a good spot and set up for the afternoon, then began preparing his gear. Judging by how much the old man was stumbling about, Destiny Fish guessed he must have finished at least half a carton of beer already. Perfect! The conditions were set for another legendary fishing battle! Destiny Fish frightened off all the mundane fish in the area so they wouldn’t bother them and stared up, eagerly awaiting.

He didn't have to wait long. Shortly after, it began! Wally cast his line, hitting the water just right. A—mazing! There was something about the way that man jiggled his lures that made them soooooo appealing. It took all of Destiny Fish’s willpower to suppress his natural instincts and not just leap at the lure right away like a wild maniac.

Steeling himself, he stretched his body left and right, took a deep breath in through his gills and let out a big stream of bubbles, “Hooo. Ok Wally. Let’s do this, bro!” he said, pumping himself up before swimming up and biting the lure.

What followed was the most hardcore, edge-of-your-seat, chapter 1, radical fishing battle ever.

Destiny Fish loved Wally. It felt like each and everyday fishing with the bloke was more entertaining than the last. Wally made Destiny Fish’s secluded life in Lake Fortune the absolute best! Today was turning out to be another great battle for the history books! However, in the end, something completely unexpected happened. Something that had never happened before in all their previous battles. Wally actually caught Destiny Fish!

What? Whoa! What!? Destiny Fish lay in Wally’s boat, wrapped in the man’s arms, completely stunned.

You have to understand, magic fish don’t get caught. Even without their wands, it just doesn’t happen. They are just too… amazing? Superior? Destiny Fish couldn't think of the right word. Regardless, what Wally had just done was nothing short of miraculous. An accomplishment that had never been achieved before in the entire history of the universe. Destiny Fish pinched himself (with his fin, of course) just to make sure he wasn’t dreaming.

He felt his excitement build up until he couldn’t contain himself any longer, "Dude! You have NO IDEA how RAD what you just did was! That was EPIC! Hahaha!" He practically screamed.

The gates were open; words started pouring out of Destiny Fish. He introduced himself, revealing that he was a creeper who had stalked Wally in the past to find out his name. Then he explained how much he respected the man, sounding like he was confessing to his school crush. It was weird and embarrassing but Destiny Fish meant every word of it. He genuinely considered Wally to be his "bro". A title he had conferred to no other before. Sure Wally was human, and said mean things, and had thrown a knife through his tail, but all that could totally be forgiven.

It quickly became apparent though that Wally wasn’t keen on a chat. He was actually looking super unwell. His face had changed colour, he was sweating even more than usual and even the way he was breathing was weird. He wasn’t even smoking anymore! Something was definitely up.

Whoops! I’m a dummy. Got so caught up blabbing on about things that I didn't notice Wally needs help, Destiny Fish thought. Not to worry, he just needed to go get his wand and figure something out. Well once he got out of the boat that was. With his tail injury and without his wand it was crazy hard to exit the boat. Embaaaarrassingggggg! Thankfully Wally was a bro about it and gave him a push.

With some flipping and flopping, Destiny Fish was over the edge and into the water. A splash came behind him moments later. Glancing back, he saw that Wally had fallen off his boat!

“Gosh, dude. Hang tight!” he called out as he rushed off, down to where he left his wand by the marble block. Grabbing it, he zoomed back up to Wally.

With a wave of the wand, he created a bubble of ‘breathable water’ around his buddy. Then he tried scanning Wally’s body with magic to see if he could find what was wrong. As it turned out, everything was wrong. The magic scan revealed just how bad Wally's condition was, “Gah, I don’t know what to do! Oh man, Oh man…” Destiny Fish said, starting to panic.

Frustrated by his lack of medical knowledge, he wracked his mind for some way to help. There had to be something he could do, he was a magic fish after all! An idea struck him. Well… there was THAT spell, however Destiny fish was hesitant to use it. After the World Fish incident, he didn't trust it anymore.

In the few seconds he spent worrying over it, he noticed Wally drawing closer and closer to death. He couldn’t think of any other options so… YOLO!

“Ok, I got an idea bro, I’m gonna try something a little extreme, brace yourself,” he warned.

He drew upon the magic deep within his soul to perform one of his most powerful spells. With a flourish of his wand, he said the magic words, “DESTINED TO MEET AGAIN!” and unleashed it towards Wally.

Red strings of destiny shot out of his wand in crazy amounts and filled their surroundings. The lake became a wriggling mass of red. Some of the strings pierced Wally’s chest, entering his body and others curved back, doing the same to Destiny Fish. He could feel them wrapping themselves around his soul.

Not long later, all the strings wriggled away out of sight, leaving only Destiny Fish and Wally behind. Now for the moment of truth, how is the magic going to miraculously save Wally’s life? Destiny Fish wondered, looking up at Wally with a hopeful glimmer in his eyes.

Wally died.

“Huh?”

As they say, ‘all good things must end’. Destiny Fish tried prodding and coercing Wally to wake up but nothing worked. He checked if the spell had gone off or not, finding that it had indeed had. He was unable to cast it again until he met Wally again. How was it supposed to do that if Wally was dead? With that thought, realisation hit him like a ton of bricks, Wally, his best friend, his bro, was no more.

Destiny Fish wept.

Not knowing what else to do, he carried Wally’s corpse up to the shore and placed it on land. He hung about, scaring away scavengers until other humans came along and found it. Immense sadness filled his heart. Dejected and heartbroken, he swam back to the bottom of the lake and stared quietly at the marble block.

Replacement Main Character 2

For a brief time after Destiny Fish had cast his spell, [Destined to meet you again], the only thing visible was the writhing mass of red strings cocooned around them. Destiny Fish didn't see it when two streams of stings shot out of the mass and flew far, far away from Lake fortune. As it turns out Wally and Destiny Fish weren’t the only ones caught up in the spell.

One of the streams flew straight up, into the sky and out of Earth’s atmosphere, aimed towards a planet named Bryan, billions of light years away.

Planet Bryan was inhabited by a race called Smarties. They're these cute little green guys, about a metre tall, with round, smooth, oversized heads and large black eyes that take up most of their faces. They have two black vertical slits for their nose, and a horizontal slit for their mouth and that’s about it. Super cute.

Smarties aren’t just super cute, they're also super smart. They pride themselves on intelligence over everything else. They had mastered space travel, reversed global warming, and even cured the common cold, all while humans were still living in caves, smashing rocks together.

High intelligence doesn't always equate to good decision making, however. A prime example of this that you may have noticed already, is that their naming sense was unbelievably terrible. Who names a planet Bryan?

Anyways, I digress. Bryan was much too far away for the strings to make it in time for what they needed to do, so they wove together and formed a drill. The destiny cloth drill spun and tunnelled a hole through the fabric of space between Earth and Bryan. It is unadvised to travel this way. This crude and violent method of space travel had the potential to collapse the universe in on itself, ending all existence. Luckily for us, this time it didn’t.

The wormhole sealed up behind them and the red strings continued flying down towards the planet. Their destination: the Hungry Hippo University campus, where they entered the dorm room of a young Smarty named Fred and switched on his space TV.

“Universe's most deadly!” the TV blasted.

“Waha!” Fred jumped from his bed and spun to his space TV. He had just been getting ready to sleep.

“Tonight on ‘Universe's most deadly’ we explore the atrocities committed by the insidious World Fish. Stay tuned as we give you a detailed play-by-play of recently recovered footage of his famous annihilation of Possum Planet, including testimony from survivors!” the exaggerated announcer said

Fred gasped, sitting up, "I thought that there were no survivors." He whispered as he wrapped his blanket tightly around himself and hugged his knees to his chest.

A CGI rendition of World Fish, a blue and green puffer fish, zoomed onto the screen, “I’m coming for you next!” it said to the audience.

Fred screamed and pulled his blankets tighter. That night he didn't sleep a wink.

Replacement Main Character 3

The second bundle of strings that split from the mass in Lake Fortune flew out across the Australian outback. They sought out a compound of white buildings in the middle of nowhere. Sneaking into the compound, the strings found their target, a dude named Tomas. They pierced into his body and wrapped themselves around his soul. He was none the wiser to this invasion as he was taking an afternoon nap at the time so let’s skip forwards to-

-A few hours later-

Adrenaline coursed through Tomas’ body, as he stalked his prey. Only two survivors remained; he had killed the rest. He burst through a bathroom door and found a man crouched, hiding in the shower, “Dinner time!” Tomas growled as he rushed forward to grab the man. The guy tried to flee but it was futile. Tomas was on him instantly. His clawed hands wrapped around his victim’s body and held him in place as Tomas’ jaws lowered down over the man’s head. With a sickening crunch, Tomas bit down, killing him immediately.

Tomas dropped the headless body onto the floor and left the bathroom, “Only one more. Come out, come out, wherever you are! 🎵” he sang into the night air.

He pressed ‘track’ and a red trail of fear pheromones leading to the last survivor appeared before him. The trail led outside, into the scrapyard. Tomas clicked his tongue, it was always annoying when they escaped there. No matter, Tomas felt unstoppable tonight, he could practically taste them already.

He charged outside and leapt over the crushed remains of a car. The moon hung low in the sky, granting his enhanced eyes perfect visibility. Slowing down as he reached the centre of the scrap yard, his ears perked up listening carefully. Footsteps from his right; he lurked after them.

His final victim was clever; clearly a veteran. They had set up several traps and escape routes along the path in the short time they’d been out there. Tomas cautiously approached, stepping over a spike pit. He came across a woman preparing a large trap that would cause a whole car to tumble down onto him if it caught him. Tomas wasn’t about to let her finish. If that happened it was game over.

He rushed forwards towards the woman. In his haste, he missed noticing a wire across his path. His foot caught it, and the wire pulled tight. Tomas gasped and immediately dropped flat to the ground. His quick reflexes saved him, his fur blew from the breeze generated by a steel beam swinging down and slamming into a stack of cars next to him, passing just where his head had been.

Hearing the commotion, the woman whipped around to look. Her eyes went wide when she spotted Tomas lying in the shadows. She immediately dropped what she was doing and fled. Tomas growled as he picked himself up. This is why hunting in the scrapyard sucked, too many places to hide traps and too many escape routes. He gave chase, sprinting and clearing obstacles at a pace the woman couldn’t match. She tried to pull loose junk down behind her to block his path, but it only served to delay the inevitable.

The woman blocked off the path behind her with a washing machine unknowingly blocking off her own escape route. Tomas had decided to cut around via another path. She started racing for the exit of the scrap yard, only to come face to face with his hulking form. She tried to juke left around him, but he stepped right in her way. The fight went out of her; she went still and looked up at him, accepting her fate.

Tomas wrapped one claw around her feet and picked her up so that she hung upside down. His other claw then gripped her arms so he could hold her sideways. Then ceremoniously raising her up above his head, he bit into her midsection. Tomas got squeamish as her whole body tore in two. Blood and guts splattered onto the screen forming the words ‘You Win’.

“Yuck! Gruesome!” Tomas exclaimed, placing down his controller, “That was so rad though. I am the best!”

He leaned back on his sofa, needing a moment to chill out after all the excitement. That was actually his first perfect victory as the beast. His new favourite game, “Night Monsters”, had mysteriously appeared in his game library earlier after his afternoon nap. It turned out to be a super fun game; he was already completely addicted. that said, he wished that the developers had held back on the extreme violence a bit more; all that blood made him squeamish.

To avoid witnessing the still continuing carnage on the screen, Tomas got up to take a break and grab a cola from his mini fridge. When he tried to stand up, however, his legs gave out and he fell to the floor.

An odd sensation rushed through his body. All of a sudden, it felt like his legs were made from rubber. He looked down, gasping in horror, as his limbs began twisting, and deforming. He tried to scream through a mouth that wasn’t where it was supposed to be, only to let out a strained, gurgling noise. His arms and legs unzipped down the centre, splitting in two. They then began to grow longer, stretching out along the floor. He could feel his neck disappear and his head become one with his body. His combined head/body grew fat and pulled tight against the robes, covering his eyes and squashing his head into an unnatural shape.

He thrashed about, hearing crashes all around him as his limbs whipped into his surroundings. Oh shoot! My game box! Tomas thought, going still; suddenly more concerned about his video game machine than his body. Moments later, he felt the strange changing sensations end. He lay on the floor, blinded by his robes, hyperventilating and wondering what on Earth just happened. Even without his vision, he was experiencing strange sensory overload from new body parts. It took a significant amount of time spent freaking out on the floor with nothing happening before Tomas calmed down enough to think straight.

What just happened? He wondered. He wiggled his head about cautiously and freed an eye from his robe. In front of his face, lay a long, dark tentacle. He tried moving his arm and felt new muscles ripple all throughout his body. The middle section of the tentacles raised up in front of him and slapped back down into the floor.

Wait, that's…My arm? A sudden idea struck Tomas, dispelling his fear and replacing it with excitement, Oh snap! I think I know what happened! I need a mirror!

Tomas began to flop and wriggle his way over to his bathroom as fast as he could. It was hard going. His whole body was now alien to him. His limbs were long, noodly and numerous. He’d try to move one limb, only to have another move instead. His robe was still pulled against his face, making it really hard to see where he was going. And he was still feeling overwhelmed by dozens of new senses.

Despite the struggles, Tomas eventually made it to the mirror and got a look at him himself, “Heck yeah! I was right!” he exclaimed. Like the beast in his video game, Tomas had transformed into a powerful monster. He had become one of the chosen. He had become…. An octopus?

No. Not an ordinary octopus; he was a were-octopus!