Tomas roused awake slowly. He was lying naked on his stomach on the cool floor. His head ached terribly. He groaned as he tried to open his eyes. The sound of his own voice sounded different to him; deeper and more 'chocolatey'. Memories came back to him of events that took place in the brief time between when he woke up at Madame Wanda's and when he was put back asleep by painful laser zaps.

He pushed himself up to get his body off the floor and look around. He landed with a thud into a sitting position and winced, closing his eyes, as his headache flared from the change of position. Sunglasses fell off his face and onto the floor. Opening his eyes again, he looked down at himself. He hadn't really had time to do it before. He was shocked at how muscular he was. He open and closed his hands a few times to test it out.

"Ah ah ah. Why does this guy sound so manly? Ah ah ah" he said out loud, testing his new voice.

After playing around enough he took in his surroundings. He was in a white walled jail cell with white bars blocking the entrance. The room was very spacious, about 6m³. It was dimly lit when he first woke but the lights brightened upon his sitting up as if to accommodate him. The walls and bars were made out of some kind of hard plastic, not stone or concrete.

In one of the corners there was a soft looking mattress built into the floor. In the other far corner was a cylinder with a hole in it and some kinda faucet. Presumably a toilet.

Tomas complained to the ceiling, "You could have at least dropped me onto the bed. Ahhh!"

Tomas startled upon looking up. Two of the flying drones that had zapped him unconscious in Wanda's house were hovering above him silently. Tomas eyed them warily but they didn't appear to be doing anything.

'Must keep them here to zap unruly prisoners' he thought.

(Actually, Einstein just hadn't told the AI to remove the drones from the cells before closing them. The AI noted Tomas' suggestion about the bed for next time.)

Tomas approached the bars of his cell. They were set quite narrowly apart, only about 10cm between them. There didn't appear to be a door or anything to open bars which made Tomas wonder how they had gotten him in there in the first place. Through his bars he could see 3 more cells across from his with a wide path dividing them. He was in the centre cell on his side.

The cells across from him were empty, but could hear loud, snoring coming from either side of his so he assumed they were occupied. The snoring from the cell to his right was very wolf-like. He'd grown up in the church of the wolf so he knew what wolf-like snoring sounded like.

"Hello! Is anyone there?!" He shouted out. There was no reply except for the snoring.

He saw a round, palm sized, button on the wall by the bars. He glanced at the flying robots once, braced himself just in case it was the 'zap the prisoner' button, and gave it a push. Nothing happened.

In Fred's room the AI spoke, "CAPTAIN, A PRISONER HAS PRESSED THE REQUEST BUTTON."

Fred was sitting at his desk reading. He looked up, annoyed, "Quieten down, no need to announce it to the whole ship, just tell the Captain directly."

The AI adjusted its volume settings. It considered the rest of his instructions. Fred was the whole crew, and he was the captain. Maybe he meant: tell him again?

"Captain, a prisoner has pressed the request button."

Tomas's survival instincts told him it was time to escape! He didn't want to be stuck in a jail cell next to his mother when she woke up. Walls did little to stop her.

He had mental trauma from the drones that zapped him unconscious. So he decided to take it cautiously. With an eye on the drones, he stuck a finger through the bars, 'no reaction phew.' Next, he put his whole hand through; Nothing happened. He tried grabbing the bars and shaking them. Both the bars and the drones stayed where they were. Next he got bolder and shifted an arm to octopus form then stuck the tentacle through the gap. Again nothing, it seemed the drones were just for show.

'Ok, this is the moment of truth' Tomas thought as he fully transformed into octopus form. It took a few seconds for Tomas to change. His hands and feet first became long thick tentacles. He dropped down onto all 4 of them as his head and torso shortened and blended together into a large blob of flesh. His eyes relocated to the base of the blob, growing larger and spreading out a bit. His mouth moved down to face below his body, and a sharp beak grew from his teeth. His nose disappeared into the main body entirely and his ears shrunk to become small holes in the sides. Four new tentacles sprouted evenly from the body and wriggled their way down to the floor as they grew to full size. Finally his bones dissolved and his skin became slimy and red. His transformation was complete. He didn't look quite like an octopus, he didn't look quite like a man. He was a were-octopus!

He took one last look at the cell before his escape attempt. He stretched one long tentacle over to the sunglasses that were still on the floor and picked them up. He had nowhere to put them as they wouldn't fit on his octopus head, so he just held onto them for now. He approached the bars and wondered if he'd be able to squeeze through. His new body had a lot more mass than his previous one. His octopus form was much larger than he was used to. Still he believed in the power of octopus. He slipped his tentacle holding the sunglasses through first, then the others. They reached out and grabbed the bars of the cell across from his and pulled his body through. His body squeezed and compressed to fit through the tiny gap in the bars. After several minutes of struggling, he popped out the other side. Octopus form really shone in situations like this.

He stood up, transformed back into his human form, and put his sunglasses on. He was extremely proud of himself and felt he deserved some victory sunglasses.

Being a shapeshifter and always changing from one form to another made wearing clothes difficult. That's why he was quite comfortable with being naked. That said, he still didn't wanna parade his stuff in front of his mum. He peeked around the corner into the next cell to check if the wolf-like snoring did indeed belong to her. Sure enough, it was her laying comfortably half on the bed in the corner fast asleep. Her cell was identical to his except she had one extra drone hovering in hers.

He turned back the other direction to see who was snoring in the other cell. Peeling carefully into the cell he saw the imposter in his body.

His body was laying on its back, Head against the toilet cylinder. He was snoring loudly through his mouth wide open. One arm was stretched above his head around the cylinder, the other down his pants having a scratch.

"Hey!" Tomas shouted, "Get your hand out of my pants!"

In Fred's room the AI spoke up again. "Captain, one of the prisoners has escaped their cell."

"Nyaaahehaaa" Fred gave a particularly embarrassing scream as he jumped up straight. "There's more than one?! What do you mean escaped?!"

"There are currently three prisoners. One has slipped through the bars of it's cell into the containment cell block's walkway."

"How did it slip through the bars? Was it Fish magic? Is the prisoner a Fish?"

"No sir, it's more akin to an octopus."

"Ok thank science. Are the doors to the containment cell room locked?"

"No Captain, shall I lock them?"

"Yes, please hurry."

"Affirmative, The containment cell are now locked"

"Thank science. Computer, did you just call me captain?"

Tomas couldn't get his original body to wake no matter how much he shouted at it. He considered throwing the sunglasses at him but he had grown attached to them in the short time they'd been together and decided not to risk breaking them. He also considered squeezing into the cell using octopus form again, but that was a lot of work and there were two more of the zap drones in the cell as well. Tomas didn't want to keep pressing his luck with them. He'd decided instead to go looking for a way to Open the bars. There was nothing he could see in the hallway so he decided to check outside the room he was in.

There was a door exiting the hallway near the last cell. Tomas cautiously opened the door, checking both ways and left the room. After stepping out and closing the door the door made a loud clicking noises, Tomas tried opening it again but it was locked. Strangely, The first thought Tomas had was that he was glad he had grabbed the sunglasses and taken them with him before being locked out. With nowhere else to go, he went off to search his new surroundings.

The Matriarch was the next captive to wake. She took a walk around her cell, ignored the drones and the button as they were obvious psychological manipulation tools. Being the head of a centuries old cult had given her an insight into such things. She tried to bend the bars of the cell but it just made her injuries hurt. Sometimes a predator had to wait for it's prey. She chose to rest and wait for an opportunity to escape to come to her.

Last to regain consciousness was Wally. He woke up with a snort, pulled his hand from his pants, gave it a sniff, and then grabbed a cigarette from his pocket. He had the Laser pistol tied around his waist by the rope of the makeshift grappling hook he had slapped together earlier. He grabbed it and shot it up to light his cigarette. The laser hit one of the floating drones in his cell, blasting it out of the air. It tumbled down in a burning wreck and crashed right in front of him.

"GOAT RAISING, DRIED UP OLD HAG!" Wally startled and kicked the burning drone away.

He spotted the other drone still hovering in his cell, lined it up with his pistol, and missed twice before shooting it down.

"Tomas is that you?" A familiar wolfy voice called out.

Wally approached the bars of his cell and called back "Is that you Wolf mama? Na, I'm not Tomas. Before you ask, yes, I know I look and sound just like the bugger, but I assure you I'm not him."

"I believe you. You don't sound like him at all actually. Tomas was never comfortable talking with me and most definitely wouldn't call me 'Wolf mama'. Who are you? Did you kill Tomas?"

"Na I'm innocent, I didn't kill anyone. I swear on my Granny's teeth. As far as I know, he's still bludging about on the table in Wanda's. I was just taking his body for a spin for a bit. I was gonna give it back but got zapped in the taint by some idiot bots and woke up in this drunk tank. Name's Wally by the way."

"Again, I believe you, Wally. I too was taken by the drones and I come from a time when a vow upon something as sacred as one's Granny's teeth was the strongest reassurance you could give. I am the Matriarch. It's nice to meet someone with such a strong hold over language. I suspect this is our first meeting. It was you I spoke to in Chook's Creek wasn't it? I foolishly believed you were my son and that he'd miraculously grown some back bone."

"Yeah that was me. Just so you know, I would've kicked the snot out of you if you had kept coming closer to Wanda."

The Matriarch laughed a Wolfy laugh relieved that her son didn't have a secret girlfriend "Maybe someday we'll find out. For now let's address our current situation, do you know where we've been taken?"

"Na , was about to ask you the same thing. I've woken up in plenty of jails before, but none like this. Ah, just found a button, gonna give it a push."

Wally pushed the button, nothing happened. So he pushed it again, then started repeatedly hitting it with his fist. Still nothing happened so he kicked it and lost balance. Then he pulled out the laser pistol and shot it. It burned a hole into the button and the wires behind. That gave Wally an idea, he looked at the pistol, "I wonder how many shots this thing has.." then aimed it at the bars of his cell

Fred had just watched the video feed that had been sent from Einstein's battle suit.

"Ok first things first, as captain, I'd like to change the ship's name to 'FREDINGTON' in all caps."

"Affirmative, name change successful."

"Next, I can't believe this, how are you so bad at basic language comprehension and yet have been given so much power over the ships functions? It's outright irresponsible!"

"Could you please elaborate? Were former Captain Einstein's orders to increase your control over the ship from nothing to Captain wrong? Should I reverse the changes?" The AI asked.

"No" Fred squinted his eyes suspiciously. That sounded awfully like a manipulative argument and had the distinct feeling that the AI had been referring to itself a lot lately.

"Captain, a prisoner has pressed the request button." The AI suddenly interrupted his thoughts.

"Which one?"

"The fishy one sir"

"Yuck, ignore it. How long until we arrive in a Scientist solar system?"

"Thirty minutes, sir."

Destiny, the concept, not the Fish, had other plans. They would not arrive at their destination.

Divination Fish, Teleport Fish, and Metal Fish were all looting a Scientist planet together.

They were working together on their part of project 'New Siren', gathering enough material to make a planet sized fishing net. Specifically ecto-plasmimite , the metal Madame Wanda uses for her soul extraction gear. Metal Fish was stripping the planet they were on of the rare metal. Teleport was there for transportation and Divination Fish was scouting out threats.After the battle of Siren, the Scientists defences were easily crushed by the three fish.

"There's a strange ship approaching. Lots of lasers on it." Divination Fish informed the others.

"Oh, let me have it. I've got a 'World Fish' worthy idea!" declared Teleport fish.

"Oh? Do tell." Pried Metal Fish.

"Divination, please show me somewhere that'll be right in the flight path of the ship" said Teleport mischievously.

Divination obliged and looked into her eaca, her curiosity piqued.

"Aren't you worried this might be some anti-fish super weapon? Like I said, it's got a lot of lasers. More than I've ever seen on any one ship before." warned divination fish

"If it's only one ship I don't think it matters how many lasers it has. What are you planning to do to it?" Metal Fish asked.

"Ok, backstory first." Grinned Teleport Fish "Remember how telepathy Fish was suggesting at the meeting the other day that we all run to another part of the universe?"

"Yes...?"

"Remember the reason why I said I didn't like that idea?" Teleport Fish's mischievous grin grew wider.

They thought back about it for a moment before Metal Fish finally got his meaning "Oh! That's wicked! Truly wicked! Can you even teleport something that far?"

" Ohhhhhh." Said divination Fish as she got it too.

Teleport Fish put on false indignation, "Of course I can! I'm the Teleport Fish!"

"I say do it". encouraged metal

"Yeah I have gotta see this. I'll 'Divination stream' (live stream with Divination magic) the whole thing." said divination. "Get ready, here it comes."

The 'FREDINGTON' flew quickly towards the Scientist planet. Suddenly its fish sensors lit. A large dark portal opened up directly in the ship's path. The ship didn't have any time to alter its course and passed through. The portal closed behind it no longer detected any fish.

Three magical fish giggled like mischievous school children.

Destiny, the fish, not the concept, and Wally's reunion was going to have to wait a while longer. Wally and the gang had just been sent far, far away to Teleport Fish's least favourite place. They had entered 'the uncomfortable' part of the universe.'