A cloth bag covering Fred’s head was pulled off. He had no idea where he was, or how he got there. He blinked, eyes adjusting, as he took in his surroundings. He was seated in an uncomfortable chair in the middle of a dim, grey room, facing a long desk where several people sat, staring down at him. He was unable to make out any features as they were all shrouded in shadow. To his left, both his teammates were seated the same as him, the bags were being removed from their heads by a muscular Smarty wearing a black domino mask and a dark suit.

Fred struggled to make sense of the situation. He remembered Einstein insisting they get breakfast to calm Fred’s nerves after the whole Weather Fish thing, a white hover-van pulling up beside them, then a sharp pain in his neck. Next thing he knew, he was waking up in this room.

Fred’s breathing grew uneven and his leg bounced as he looked to his team for more information. Einstein sat next to Fred, in the middle chair and Edison on the furthest one. She stared up at the table in front of them, looking the polar opposite of how Fred felt, cool, calm, and in control.

As for Edison… Without a hint of subtlety, his eyes telescoped out to get a better look at the people in the shadows. His lips thinned, then his eyes telescoped out even further, to the point that Fred worried that they would fall out of his head. Despite his best efforts, he clearly couldn’t see anything.

A distorted voice spoke out from the table, “Little Girls, thank you for joining us. We apologise for the way in which you were brought here. It was a necessary formality. It is good to see that you are safe. We feared we had lost you at the invention convention.”

“Who are you? Why have you taken us?” Einstein called out.

Several heartbeats worth of silence after her outburst, a different distorted voice spoke up, “We are the Space-Illuminati,” The Little Girls team collectively gasped, “And we have brought you here today for two very important reasons.”

The Space-Illuminati was a not-so-secret, secret society. Although they technically didn’t exist, they totally did and everyone knew about it. Fred had an uncle who knew a guy who made coffee for their head office (which was also not a very well-kept secret, since it was the largest, most ominous-looking building in the city). The Space-Illuminati took care of all the secret and nefarious things in Smarty society by doing such things as, stopping commonly occurring evil scientists from destroying the world, disabling rogue artificial intelligences, and nuking giant mutated monsters rising from the depths of the sea.

A third distorted voice took over for the second, “The first reason is in regards to the invention you were planning to submit to the invention convention, ‘The Milk-Shaker’. We have been keeping track of its progress very closely, its mere existence could be considered a war crime by those less open-minded than us. Ultimately, we decided to allow you to keep it and present it at the convention because none of you have shown any tendencies towards being evil,”

“Except for Fred,” another voice interrupted.

“Except for Fred,” the third voice confirmed.

“Hey!” Fred complained.

“However, he only ranks 7 out of 10 on our evil scale, so, as we stated, we decided to allow you to keep the invention,” the voice continued, ignoring Fred, “That is until the events of this morning. As you are no doubt aware, this morning Weather fish attacked the convention and was killed in retaliation. Already we are starting to see dramatic shifts in weather patterns and unusual magic fish activity. We can safely assume that there will be trouble for our species in the near future, and therefore will be confiscating ‘The Milk-Shaker’ for the upcoming conflict,”

“Science willing, we won’t have to use it,” Another voice took over for the previous one, “The second reason we have called you here today is about the safety of your team. We lost most of the world’s brightest inventors at the convention this morning, we can’t afford to lose any more. A vessel has been prepared to take you away from Planet Bryan until it is safe to return. You will be sent out to do field research in a quiet part of the galaxy.”

“WHAT?!” Einstein stood up so suddenly, her chair tumbled back, “No way! We should stay here and help. We can help! Right guys?”

“Yeah let us fight the fish!” shouted Edison standing as well, “We just have to piss Fred off and he can invent something to annihilate them all. Tell ‘em Fred.”

“Guys, sit down, we’re not going to fight magic fish,” Fred said, his terror-filled eyes never leaving the shadowy figures at the table.

“Fred?!” Einstein asked incredulously.

Someone at the table cut them off, “I’m glad to see that Fred is taking his role of eldest in the team seriously. We are not just protecting you, we are protecting the future of the Smarty race. The magic fish are not to be taken lightly. Should we fail, it falls to you to avenge us.”

An undistorted voice from behind added, “And it’s not like you have a choice anyway,” Fred’s vision went dark as the bag from earlier was pulled back over his head, he felt a stab in his neck and then his consciousness faded.

𖢙 𖢙 𖢙 𖢙 𖢙

For the second time, Fred woke up with no idea where he was or how he got there. He could feel the softness of a comfortable bed press underneath him as he sat up and his eyes adjusted to the dim light of the room he had awoken in. It was a circular room that held all of his things from his dorm room.

Fred realised that the Space-Illuminati must have taken all of the things from his old room and transferred them to this one. The blood drained from his face as he realised this meant they saw everything in his room, What about the things under my bed?

He rolled off the bed with a thud onto the floor and stared wide-eyed under the bed. He swallowed as a knot grew in his throat. Unable to control his hand tremors, he reached out to grab one of the two boxes from underneath and slid it open.

His stash of tongue-themed erotic magazines was all there, but not in the order he had left them.

He closed the lid, slid it back under his bed, then covered his blushing face with both hands and rolled back on the floor, trying not to cry. That had been the legal box of the two.

He calmed his nerves enough to reach out and take a hold of the second box. The familiar weight and the liquid sloshing inside let him know that it still contained its contents. He was about to open the lid, just to be sure when the door to his room slid open. He quickly dropped the box and slid it back under his bed.

“Fred! There you are! Why are you on the floor?” Einstein asked.

“N-Nothing! No reason! What are you doing here? Where are we even?” Fred blurted out.

“We’re on a flying saucer. Those Space-Illuminati buttheads really sent us away. Come with me to find Edison,” She ordered, marching over, dragging Fred up to his feet and then pulling him along behind her.

They found Edison right away, in a room near Fred’s, laying on his bed, playing on his smarty phone. Turns out the ship came equipped with space WiFi so they could stay up-to-date with events. Einstein grabbed him as well and they all set out to explore.

The flying saucer they were in was pretty luxurious. It had all sorts of living rooms, dining rooms, research stations, and even a prison for captured aliens. All the rooms were wide, circular domes.

Eventually, they stumbled into the command centre. There were three egg-shaped workstations facing a large curved screen on one of the walls. Einstein sat down at the central one and began typing furiously on the station's keyboard. Information flashed up on the screen almost too fast for Fred to follow, but for a super genius like Einstein, it was no problem.

“What is up with this horrible user interface,” she murmured before spinning her chair to face her two teammates, “ Ok, here’s what I found. We are on the ‘F.S. Wibble Wobble’ bound for a remote part of the Orion galactic arm. I have been assigned captain, as I should, since I’m still team leader, but my access to certain commands is restricted. For example, I can’t change the ship’s direction unless we detect something worth investigating on the scanning station,” She said pointing to the workstation to her left, “Our mission written here, is to explore this area of space for anything useful we can find while everyone else dies,” she burst into tears suddenly.

“Einstein,” Fred stepped forward. She leapt out of her chair and grabbed him in a tight hug, weeping into his shirt. Fred exchanged a look with Edison as he pat Einstein on the back. It was easy to forget that she was just a kid. She had been putting on a brave face during all the craziness of the last day but couldn’t keep it up. She needed to let go and let her emotions out. To be honest, Fred was planning to do the same, later when she couldn’t see. Everything had spiralled out of control so suddenly.

Edison was useless and Fred truly was the oldest, the responsibility rested on him to fix this. He grabbed the weeping Einstein by her shoulders and moved back so he could look her in the eyes, “Einstein, I understand, you feel powerless right now, but I know something that even the Space-Illuminati doesn’t know,”

Einstein sniffed her dripping nose and looked up at Fred curiously.

He smiled and kept going, “We are the Little Girls; the greatest team of inventors in all of Smarty history. They just haven’t realised it yet. With your genius and my powers, we’re gonna show them all. It doesn’t matter if they send us out to the edge of nowhere, we can still make a difference and change history. Heck, even if we don’t invent something to change history, we’ll at least have Edison’s cybernetic tongue idea to fall back on.”

Einstein stared at Fred quietly for a moment. A big smile grew wider and wider on her face until she burst out laughing and space-karate punched Fred in the arm, “You’re right Fred! Thank you! Thank you so much, that’s just what I needed to hear. Alright Little Girls, let's get to work!”

They worked their butts off with smiles on their faces. That night after they all decided to call it a day, someone knocked on Fred’s door. When opened it he found Edison standing there, “Hey man, what’s up?” Fred asked.

“Hi mate, came around for a chat. Mind if I come in?” Edison replied.

“Uhhh… sure, no problem,” Fred let him in, feeling confused. Edison generally kept to himself so Fred had no idea what he would want to talk about.

They got comfy on a couple of chairs, Edison smiled and started talking, “This is awkward. It's kind of a serious topic I wanted to chat about. Heh, there seems to be a lot of serious chats going around these days, huh?”

“Yeah,” Fred nodded, growing even more curious.

“I’ve been thinking about what you said today. Specifically about how between your power and Einstein’s genius we can make a real difference. Don’t worry, I’m not offended that I wasn’t included in that list or anything.” he quickly clarified, seeing the concern on Fred’s face, “I actually totally agree. You two really shone when we made The Milk-Shaker together. It was a beautiful sight to behold,”

Edison sighed, “Anyways, I’ve been thinking about my role here and how to best help the team. And I think I figured out what I can do to help. I mean really help. But… It’s pretty dangerous. So I really needed to come here and let you know what I'm doing before I do it so I don’t end up crippled, dead, or worse.”

“What are you talking about, Edison? You don't need to endanger yourself; we’re inventors,” said Fred.

“Yeah, na, I know what you mean. But.. ok just listen: You know how your power works when you’re super angry, right? Well guess what? I know your secret!” Edison said, his mechanical smile beaming.

Fred’s stomach dropped. It took all of his willpower not to look over at where the boxes were hidden under his bed.

Edison pulled out his smarty phone and showed Fred the image on the screen. Fred almost leapt out of his chair, startled. Oh no, he means my other secret.

On the screen was a picture of Vegetable Fish. Edison’s smile was so wide it almost split his head in two, “You are afraid of fish!” He declared with excited enthusiasm, “I humbly request you don’t murder me in the upcoming weeks, because I intend to make your life a living hell!”