One day, every single Xatu on the planet simultaneously froze in terror at exactly the same time.



For the few humans and Pokemon that were riding on a Xatu's back at the time, this was quite disastrous.



It was, in fact, those very disasters that woke the humans up to just what was happening. As the Xatu trainers recovered in the hospital, the people of Pokearth turned to psychics and empaths and Pokemon whisperers to find out just what it was that had caused the Xatu so much terror.



The answer, regardless of where it came from, was always grim: the Xatu had all seen the future. A future of darkness, of terrible destruction, that no one on Pokearth was capable of preventing.



The children of the Xatu, the Natu, had also seen this terrible vision. As one, the Natu of Johto all flocked to the Ruins of Alph, seeking within the ancient temple the strange and mysterious creatures called Unown, those that could warp reality itself to their wills.



The Natu asked the Unown,



Can this future be prevented?



The Unown answered,



Not by us. Not by anyone living in this world.



And then the Natu asked,



Well then, what about somebody else?



And the Unown said,



We'll look into it...





Chapter One: To Know The Unown



Benga's POV



My name is Benga, and I am the best cat ever. I know this because my human, Terra, tells me every day. I'm an orange tabby with bright green eyes, a rough pink tongue, and a purr that you can hear three houses down. Or so I'm told; I can't see orange or pink, and I'm fairly sure the purr statement was hyperbole. But it's what Terra says about me.



I also know that Terra is the best human ever. Okay, so I don't have much of a sampling (I'm not allowed out of the house because I pick fights with other cats), but who else would be? She feeds me, brushes me, strokes me, plays with me, and cleans my litter box. She has beautiful brown skin and dark, luxurious fur on her head (only she calls it hair). Of course she's the best human ever.



She does, however, have some funny moments.



There is something in her life that I do not quite understand, and it's called Pokemon. Pokemon video games, Pokemon television, Pokemon manga, Pokemon card games, Pokemon figures. She even wears a hat that looks like a knitted Poke Ball. If I didn't know any better (which I do), I'd think she liked Pokemon almost as much as she likes me.



But that's just crazy talk.



She even plays Pokemon with me, if you can believe that. Mainly she puts catnip on cheap bootleg Pikachu plushies and ties them to a string. She calls it "Exp. Grinding," whatever that is. Usually the plushies turn out ripped to pieces, but it's loads of fun. She says things like "Benga, use Scratch!" and "Use Lick!", but I don't really pay much attention.



I love my human, so very much.



---



One day Terra went away for a while, at something she called a convention. She packed up lots of bags, and put on a special outfit that she called cosplay. She packed a lot of things, but she forgot to pack the most important thing -- me! Even when I climbed on top of her bags and looked imploringly at her.



She was gone for three days. I sat by the window and meowed ceaselessly for her, but she didn't come back. I even made a mess outside the litter box so she'd have to come back and clean it up, but her parents just cleaned it up for her.



Finally, she came back.



If I'd thought she'd brought plenty of bags leaving, she brought even more coming back. It was all Pokemon stuff -- more DVDs and manga and trading cards and figures and stuff like that. She even got me a great squeaky Pikachu toy, which was my best friend for four hours until it escaped under the refrigerator (somehow they never last as long as I'd like them to).



But the most interesting thing she got was the tiles.



The tiles.



She said she won it in a contest at the conference, a contest to test her Pokemon knowledge. I find it amazing that humans can retain so much knowledge about some field of study or another that is entirely fictional, while cats for the most part focus on the practical aspects of life, such as food, naps, self-defense, and convincing the humans to pay attention to you. Sure we like to chase a ping-pong ball or two across the kitchen floor, but this is mainly to exercise our hunting instincts, which are quite necessary if your human doesn't want mice in the house (which most humans don't, for some odd reason. Food and fun all in one.)



Terra went up to her room to open the box, and I followed. Sitting down at her table, she set out a long flat thing she called the game board, and then picked out a series of tiles and set them down on the board in a sort of bent shape. She said that the tiles said "Terra" and "Benga" in Unown script. Well, I didn't hear them say anything, and I've been told cats can hear better than humans. But Terra doesn't tell lies.



Maybe it's a figure of speech.



Each tile had a funny shape on it, a squiggly black shape with a circle and a dot in the middle. Terra called these shapes Unown symbols. "It's just like the tile set in the third Pokemon movie," she explained, although I didn't really know what she meant by that.



"Meow?" I asked. I'm not terribly fluent in English, due to my vocal chords, so I go for broke on voice inflection. Terra usually understands about half of what I tell her.



"Silly Benga..." she said, scratching me behind my ears. "You know, Spell of the Unown. The one with Entei. In the movie, Molly Hale uses Unown tiles to summon the Unown, although she doesn't mean to, by putting them together to spell Mama and Papa."



She paused. "Wouldn't it be nice if we could summon the Unown with this tile set, just like that?"



I vaguely remembered the Entei movie, and I didn't really think that would be nice at all. That's the movie where the Unown get all out of control and keep warping reality until Entei finally stops them. And since we don't have an Entei (although the Unown might give us one), I didn't think it was a good idea to try to invite the Unown into our house. Terra's mother would probably flip.



Unfortunately, I lacked the vocal chords to tell Terra this. I settled for the kind of stink-eye stare that a cat gives a human when the human is being entirely out of line.



"Okay, maybe not THAT nice," Terra admitted. "You have a valid point."



Pleased with myself, I turned towards the tiles and batted one or two of them off the table. This is called Cat Hockey, and it's a fun game to play with humans because they have opposable thumbs and will try to set the tiles back to where they were, so you can knock them off the table again.



Terra groaned and reached down to pick up the tiles. "Honestly, Benga..." I don't think she likes Cat Hockey as much as I do, but if she didn't, then why did she set up the tiles to begin with?



When she picked up the tiles, she almost dropped them again, then regarded them curiously. "Hmm. Is it my imagination, or are these... vibrating?"



I looked at the tiles in her hand and watched her set them down. Come to think of it, I could hear a slight humming sound coming from the box of tiles.



Maybe there was a bug in there? I crept carefully towards the box, sticking low to the table. Along the way, I accidentally stepped on one of the loose tiles still on the board.



It stung me.



Let me repeat that.



IT STUNG ME.



"MEOW!" I said loudly, indignant. The sting didn't hurt all that much, but it was the principle of the thing. "You stupid tile!" (Obviously, that was a translation.)



By this point the humming had grown loud enough that Terra could hear it, and she dropped the tile she was holding in shock. "Benga!" she yelled. "Get off the table! Don't touch any of the tiles!"



I tried to take a step backward, and I touched another tile. A surge of energy passed through me, and I leapt back, fur all poofy, stumbling over the edge of the table.



But I didn't fall.



Falling I could have handled. I'm a cat. I land on my feet at least most of the time. But I wasn't falling. It felt like some energy in the air around me was holding me up. And the hum of the tiles grew louder, and it wasn't just a hum now but a series of chattering noises, coming from the tiles and around the tiles and above me and below me and behind me and from frickin' EVERYWHERE.



I pulled my ears back in alarm (this is something cats do in stressful situations to keep their ears from sticking out and getting injured). It was exactly the same noise as the Unown in the Entei movie. I looked around quickly, terrified. Were the Unown coming?



They were. From the tiles.



The Unown rose up like a swarm of flies, chirping and buzzing and chattering like all sorts of creatures that normally would be on the opposite end of the food chain from me. Terra froze in shock as if hypnotized, watching the Unown rising.



"Meow!" I yelled, trying to snap her out of it. "MEOW!!!"



But the Unown kept coming, kept buzzing, kept swirling around like dancing embers in a fire...