👽Fred👽

Fred’s team rushed into the bridge soon after the alarms went off to find him still rocking back and forth on the floor, “What's going on?” Einstein demanded. Fred was unresponsive. She ordered Edison, “look after him for a moment, I’ll figure out what the alarms are about.” She sat down at the scanner and began typing.

After a minute, the alarm turned off. Einstein kept typing and let out an impressed whistle, “That's an impressive upgrade to the scanners. Well done, Fred! But you forgot to account for magical residue left after a fish casts a spell. Unfortunately, we didn’t detect an actual magical fish, just the leftover magic from one's spell.” She looked down at Fred on the floor. He was breathing steadier and his eyes had regained focus upon hearing her words, “What happened, Fred? Why are you acting like that?”

“Fish spook him.” Edison snickered.

“Huh? What do you mean?” she asked, her forehead creasing in concern.

“Here lemme show you. Check out this video,” Edison held up his smarty phone giggling and showed her the recording from the camera inside the fish robot earlier.

Einstein's face grew colder and colder as she watched the video. She slowly got up and stood up on the scanner’s chair. She was much too short to perform what she planned without it. She leapt off and performed a perfectly executed spinning space-karate kick to the side of Edison’s head. His cybernetic neck nearly detached from the blow. Einstein bounced backwards, spinning mid-air and landed on her feet, “You’re an absolute jerk!” She spat, “I knew something was up when I saw you building that robot fish in the engineering bay! You knew Fred was ichthyophobic and were trying to torment him!”

“No, c’mon, Einstein, it’s not like that. It was just a harmless prank” Edison flustered.

“I’m cutting off your access to space WiFi,” She growled

“Einstein please..” He begged

Fred sat up, “Stop fighting, guys. Einstein, it’s fine, I’m ok. I just got spooked by the scanner. Edison, you’re fine too, I’m honestly angrier about the clocks than the mechanical fish.”

“Clocks?”

“You don't need to put up with that kind of behaviour, Fred. We’re a team and we all need to treat each other with respect!” Einstein insisted

Fred sighed, “I know, but… this is Edison's way of helping the team. Look at what he helped me accomplish with the scanner.”

Edison interjected, “See? I’m helping. No need to cut off my space WiFi.”

“Hmph, I don’t care. Don’t threaten our team’s integrity,” She pouted as she sat back down and typed in the command to remove his space WiFi.

“Speaking of the Scanner,” She said, “I wonder what it was that you managed to detect,” she typed some more, “Let’s see here… the signal came from a nearby, primitive planet named, ‘Earth’? Weird name. Anyways, definitely a powerful spell was cast there. I wonder which fish it was…”

She spun to face Fred and Edison, “Ok guys, this is actually great news! The ship’s rules won’t let us go anywhere near an actual magical fish, but they didn’t specify anything about going near magic! That means we can go investigate this planet Earth!”

“What if the scans are wrong?” Fred asked worried, "What if it's an actual magic fish?"

“Please, Einstein, the space WiFi,” Edison complained.

Einstein ignored them both, “Yes, I’m team leader, so it’s settled, we’re going to Earth!” She scampered over to the captain's workstation and rerouted their course.

🐙Tomas🐙

The yowie which had been hunting Tomas sniffed the air. Several kilometres away, its prey had finally left the water! This time it wouldn't let him escape! It took off running in the direction of the smell.

After chasing the scent for a few hours, it came across something strange. By a lake, several trees had been stained in octopus ink, making everything stink like the prey. It was all fresh so it couldn’t have gone far. It knew that this prey was good at hiding so it slowed down and searched the area carefully.

Seeing a suspicious pile of rocks, the yowie ran over to kick them. They were just rocks; they flew away into the trees. The yowies' foot hurt but it was not discouraged. As it looked around, it spotted several similar piles of rocks, placed all around on both the ground and in the trees. The yowie growled.

Out of the water, no matter how tricky the prey was, it was only a matter of time before it was found. The yowie sniffed the air and followed its nose, kicking rocks and smashing trees in its path.

With its 6th sense, it felt some eyes fall upon it. It spun towards the feeling and rushed towards it. Soon, it came across an oddity. A pure white creature sat completely still in the middle of the forest. It was completely unphased by the yowie's arrival. The yowie hesitated because it could tell that this was not an ordinary creature. For starters, it was more beautiful and divine than anything it had ever seen before. Furthermore, something wasn’t right, the white creature was staring right at the yowie, and yet its 6th sense didn't react at all. Moving closer, it realised the beautiful creature wasn’t even breathing. Was it dead? The yowie sniffed the air and approached. The scent of octopus was thick in the air.

A few steps away from the frozen creature, the yowie felt a gaze land on it again. Not from the strange creature in front of it though, the gaze came from straight above. The yowie was too slow to react as a slippery, boneless mass fell on it from the branches above. Eight strong tentacles wrapped around its limbs and body and tried to squeeze its life out. The tentacle's colour shifted from that of the branches above to a bright yellow. Flickering rings of blue lit up on the tentacles. Something bit down on the back of the yowie’s neck.

A slow, grappling battle began between them. The yowie struggled, its breathing and movement were restricted by the coiling tentacles. The tentacles weren’t strong enough to stop the yowie from moving though. Bit by bit, it slowly began to overpower the tentacles. Its muscles strained as it reached up to grab the tentacle wrapped around its face. Slowly, the yeti began pulling it off. Suction pads that had been sticking to its face came loose one at a time with a loud ‘pop’ each time. One suction cup, right on its eyeball, threatened to pull the whole eye out, but the yowie managed to wiggle it off and keep its eye.

Growling through a constricted throat, the yowie clenched down on the free tentacle it now held in its hand. The tentacle writhed and wiggled, but couldn’t get free from the yowie’s grip. Opened its mouth wide to reveal dozens of jagged yellow teeth, the yowie slowly pulled the tentacle in. Another tentacle unwrapped from around the yowie’s waist and coiled around its wrist, pulling tight to save the other one. It wasn't enough, the tentacle drew closer to the mouth until it was all the way in. The yowie bit down.

"Aaaahhhh!" The prey stopped biting the yowie’s neck and screamed out in pain.

The yowie’s sharp teeth bit all the way through the tentacle meat. It convulsed in pain. The yowie let out a muffled laugh of pleasure around all the octopus flesh in its mouth but stopped abruptly; something was wrong.

Its grip on his tentacle began to weaken. The tentacle around the yowie’s neck tightened. The yowie was having greater difficulty breathing now. A different tentacle unwound from around its leg, reached up and grabbed the yowie’s face. With some pulling on the yowie’s jaw, its mouth was successfully pried open and the damaged tentacle pulled out. Slowly, all of the tentacles unwound from around the yowie.

Despite now being free from constraint, it didn't move to take advantage of the freedom. Or rather, it couldn’t. Its body was frozen. The last tentacle to release was the one around its neck. It watched motionless as its prey hopped down in front and nursed its wounded tentacle. It was severed all the way through and dripped blue blood onto the forest floor. The yowie fell backwards, struggling for breath and stared up at the were-octopus.

-earlier-

Divine inspiration washed over Tomas, {A were-octopus can do anything a normal octopus can but better}

This got Tomas thinking about the early days of excitement upon receiving his power and a line from one of the many Wikipedia articles on octopi he had read, "The blue-ringed octopus, despite its small size, carries enough venom to kill 26 adult humans within minutes."

Well, if a 12 - 20 cm octopus had that much venom, how much did a human adult sized one have? Not only that but as a were-octopus Tomas must have possessed a venom several times more potent than that.

This epiphany gave Tomas the confidence he needed to take the yowie down. But there were 2 problems. First, he needed to get close enough to safely bite it. Second, he had to survive long enough afterwards for the venom to take effect. Using all his octopus tricks and the divine statue as bait, he had succeeded. Not without injury, however.

-back in the present-

Tomas held his severed tentacle tight, "Noooo, my tentacle!" he whined.

He transformed back to his human form to see the damage. His left hand was missing from the wrist up. Blood started pouring out of the stump as soon as he was in human form. He almost vomited at the sight of blood and quickly changed back. He managed to stop the bleeding by wrapping a tentacle around the stump.

The good news was: all wasn’t lost, octopi could regrow limbs. The bad news was: It took time. Time Tomas didn't have if the Matriarch was still alive, recovering. This was going to complicate things, how long could he afford to wait before giving up his powers? Should he give them up at all? They had just saved his life after all. There was no way to decide now but he’d have time to think about it on his way to Chook’s creek.

He looked down at the yowie, suddenly feeling horrible. It lay motionless on the ground; its life rapidly draining. There was no way it would recover given the amount of venom he had injected. Tomas' horrible feeling was hard to explain, sure the thing had tried to eat him, but it was just following its nature. Furthermore, octopi are delicious; of course, it wanted a taste.

So not knowing what else he could do, Tomas sat beside the dying yowie and stroked its fur until it passed away, octopus tears dropping from his eyes. Afterwards, he stacked stones on it to give it a proper grave.

Dark deed done, he turned to the fish statue. Just who made it and left it at the bottom of the lake? And what were the odds of Tomas finding it? It was so beautiful, he wished he could bring it along with him. It would look sick in his bedroom. But, alas, he could not. Besides, it was better left there as a gravestone to the Yowie.

He thanked the creator of the statue for the inspiration and thanked the yowie for a great hunt then left to continue his journey.

🍕Destiny Fish🍕

Destiny Fish felt a sudden and inexplicable surge of artistic pride.

A magical gate opened up in an alley outside of a Smarty secrets facility. Destiny Fish and Time Fish swam out of it. Saying their goodbyes to Gate Fish.

"Third time's a charm," whispered Time Fish, "We'll get it this time," he assured Destiny Fish and took the lead creeping towards the facility. Throwing himself into spy work had really helped Time Fish calm down about the time splitting disaster.

"It's practically destined at this point, dude," whispered back with a wink.

This was the duo's latest attempt at infiltrating such a facility. There had been several failed attempts before. They had learned from their previous mistakes and were ready this time. Time Fish and Destiny Fish were practically ninjas now with how stealthy they'd become. They slipped into the facility, carefully avoided heavily armed guards and cleverly placed security cameras like it was a stroll through the park. They arrived in front of an unusual door with a suspicious amount of locks and keypads placed on it.

Time Fish whispered, “This is it. Careful, last time the booby traps went off as soon as we both entered. We're going with the trouble bubble, snatchy catch plan. You want to go over it again?”

Destiny Fish shook his head, “Na, I got it. Gotta say though, damn dude, look at you with the sick planning Skillz! Hehehe. You're so cool right now,” he said with a cheesy smile, “I feel it in my fins, man, this time we’re destined to succeed… maybe. Hehehe. Ok, I’m ready when you are.” He bent himself ready to fish-slap the door as Time Fish spat out his wand.

“Here we go in, 3, 2, 1, HYPERTIME!” Time Fish spoke the magic words. Dozens of ghostly clocks shot out from his wand and twirled around his body. Destiny Fish spun his body and tail-slapped the door off its hinges. This wasn’t magic; it was just something Destiny Fish was particularly good at. From Time Fish’s perspective, this all took place in super slow motion. [Hypertime] was a spell that would temporarily give its target more time to perform any action, at the cost of eventually having to give that time back later.

As soon the explosive force of Destiny Fish’s tail-slap dislodged the door far enough inwards for Time to squeeze in, he went for it. He pushed past the still-flying door and began snatching up documents as fast as he could with magic bubbles and throwing them back towards the door.

Explosive traps around the room started going off. Spheres of fire and destruction began expanding slowly like blossoming flowers. Time Fish rushed to areas where the explosions were appearing first, rescuing those documents, then moved to the others. The slow-motion explosions continued to grow and fill the room, getting too big for him to avoid any longer. He swam for the exit with a final pile of documents and dove into a magical bubble that Destiny Fish was creating. Thanks to his magical time sense, he entered the bubble just in time for it to seal off and his own spell to change.

[Hypertime] entered its second phase. Time Fish's situation reversed. Now, he was trapped in slow motion and everything else appeared in fast forward from his perspective.

The explosions from the archive room broke harmlessly around Destiny Fish’s bubble, leaving the fish and the documents untouched. The fires were made to destroy documents, not fish barriers. Time Fish had done an excellent job in securing as many documents as possible in what was literally a few seconds. It was a masterfully executed trouble bubble, snatchy catch.

While Destiny Fish waited for him to catch up in time, he decided to peruse some of the documents. Picking up a random file, He began reading, “Let’s see what we have here: the results of the next elections, space Illuminati, blablabla, shadow lords. Booooooring.” Destiny Fish tossed the document aside and grabbed another, “Super Weapon: ‘Project Milkshake’ created by ‘The Little Girl’s team’. HAHAHAHA! OMGoddess, those names…” he scanned the document further, “Awww, they were shipped away in a divination proof spaceship?! Too bad, I want to tease them about their team name. Cool weapon though!” He tossed that document aside too, picking up the next one, “Ohhhhh! Now we're talking!”