Monday morning. Every big city road — Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Kolkata — packed with cars. Kids in school buses. Then, suddenly...
Every single traffic light in India switched off. At once.
Some went pitch dark. Some froze stuck on red. Traffic jams stretched for miles. Ambulances got stuck. Horns blared — honk honk HOOONK — so loud it hurt everyone's ears.
Dogsy and Napu looked out the window, jaws dropping.
"Uh oh," said Dogsy. "Uh oh, uh oh, uh oh," said Napu, which is not usually how superheroes talk, but honestly, it was a lot of traffic.
Then Dogsy's eyes lit up. "Wait — traffic lights connect to the internet! Someone's hacked them!"
"BYTES!" they both shouted.
Ting-ting-ting! Out zoomed their tiny tech-mouse friend Bytes, round glasses wobbling. "Fighter mode ON!" he squeaked, flipping open his mini laptop. His paws flew — click-clack-click-clack! — code zoomed across the screen like race cars.
"Found him!" Bytes announced. "Hacker's name: 'The Angry Commuter.' Signal's coming from... hmm, it's bouncing all over the place. I can narrow it to somewhere near the old canal on the city border, but I need the exact spot."
"Leave that to me," Napu grinned. He wasn't just King of Snakes — every creature that swam could talk to him too. He knelt by the murky canal water and gave a low, bubbly whistle.
Up popped a school of tiny silver fish, all talking at once. "Ooh, ooh, a boy who talks to fish!" "Is this a trick?" "Ask him about the cable!"
"Settle down," said the eldest fish, a fat one named Guppy-ji. "Yes, young King. There's a thick black cable running along our canal bed — buzzing all night, every night. It goes straight under that spooky old warehouse over there." He flicked his fin toward a crumbling building.
"Perfect clue, thanks Guppy-ji!" Napu said, and the fish did a little bubbly cheer.
Vroom! The super-scooter zoomed to the warehouse. Napu whispered to his snakes, "Surround it — nobody escapes!" They pushed open the creaky iron door — screeech — and found blue-green lights flashing, giant computers humming, and a boy named Aditya, laughing like a cartoon villain at his screens full of traffic jams.
"Stop, Aditya!" Napu roared. "Why are you doing this?"
Aditya spun around, shaking with anger. "Five years ago, I had my big exam! I studied my whole life for it! But a broken traffic light trapped me in a jam for three hours. I missed it. My whole future — gone! So today, I'll trap the whole country, so everyone feels what I felt!"
Dogsy calmly put a hand on his shoulder. "Aditya. Look at this screen." A school bus, full of crying kids in the heat. Another screen — an ambulance stuck, an old grandmother in pain.
"Because of you," Napu said gently, "some kids might miss their own exam today. You were hurt by a broken system once. Now you're breaking other people's dreams. Is that really what you want?"
Aditya's anger melted into tears. "No... I didn't want this. I was just so angry."
He typed in the password, deleted the virus, and — ding! — traffic lights across the country flicked back to green. Cars moved. Ambulances raced off. Everyone breathed out at once.
The police arrived to take Aditya away, but Dogsy gave him one more thing: hope. "Once you've served your time, we'll help you get a real job in the traffic department. Use your coding skills to build a smarter system — one that never breaks another kid's dream."
Aditya nodded, tears still on his cheeks, and thanked them as he was led away.
Roads ran smoothly again. The whole country sighed with relief. And somewhere in a murky canal, a school of silver fish told the story to anyone who'd listen — about the day they helped save the nation's traffic.
Goodnight, my clever one. Even a fish in a canal can hold the missing clue — you just have to know how to ask.