Wow. I worked on this chapter all day yesterday. The next chapter is more exciting, but this one is pretty important too.

So here's Chapter 27!

Chapter 27
The Unown of the Ruins

Fresh, chilly dew drops glittered on the long blades of delicate grassland. The morning sun rose from the horizon, sparkling on the smooth, glass-like waters of Lake Alph—one of two lakes within the Ruins of Alph.

The leaves bended and chimed like quiet bells as a small group of sheep-like Pokémon carefully scuttled from the wilderness to the lake. The cool water rippled as the youngest took the first drink. They turned their heads cautiously yet curiously, watching a human girl sleeping nearby. A gentle breeze wisped strands of her cyan blue hair across her face. Her eyelashes fluttered, and her lips murmured under her breath.

"Who...are you...?" she asked softly in her sleep. A tired sigh escaped her as she dreamed. Her Pokédex slipped from her hand, activating on its own accord upon facing the fluffy Pokémon. The three sheep immediately jumped as they heard its humanlike electronic voice.

"Mareep, the Wool Pokémon. Type: Electric
Its fleece grows continually. In the summer, it is fully shed, but grows back within a week. A lot of air is in this wool, allowing Mareep to stay warm in winter and cool in summer. If static electricity builds up in its body, its fleece doubles in volume. Beware: touching it in this state will shock you."

The Mareep looked at one another, and a pair of them timidly approached the girl and her red machine. One prodded a button on the Pokédex with its little black nose. "Mareep?"

"Additional Pokémon cry recorded: Mareep?" The device repeated, causing the sheep to jolt in astonishment.

Marina shifted, tilting her head to the other side as she began to stir from her slumber. The Mareep took a step or so back when the girl yawned. They watched in hushed apprehension as the youngest innocently bounded toward her, straining its little neck to stare at her face. Another, after gaining some courage, walked over and lightly tugged on her new blue jacket.

"Ma, ma, mareep," it baaed impishly.

"Mm...?" The girl opened her eyes. Upon feeling her pulled sleeve, she blinked and found herself gazing into the deep teal eyes of the Wool Pokémon. She lay with a frozen look of surprise. "...Mareep?"

"Ma, mareep mareep!" it cried happily, wagging its black and yellow tail from side to side with the amber jewel at its end blinking. The two young Mareep backed away and rejoined their familiar. They lingered, watching the girl watch them before scampering back into the woods.

Marina smiled and shaded her eyes as she looked towards the sun, and checked her PokéGear. The screen showed time to be eight thirty-one in the morning, and the day Thursday. Taking a bit of her mother's advice, she opted to take her time traveling from Goldenrod City to the Ruins of Alph—keeping herself busy by battling every Trainer in her wake. She arrived at the ruins on good time, although she would have to wait a day to see if the rumor Whitney had told her was true.

Making another yawn, the girl stretched her arms in the air, picking her Pokédex back up and closing it. She leaned on the tree behind her, fixing her eyes on the pastel morning sky.

"Hm, I wonder if Bugsy's here," she questioned aloud. She stroked the smooth, warm egg in her lap and hugged it close. "He did say that he went to the ruins, right?"

"Your memory is good, Marina."

"Not really, but thanks—." Marina froze and turned to her left, gazing up with her common blank expression. After getting over her initial shock, she smiled again. "Oh, hi Bugsy!" she greeted, standing.

"Good morning," the violet-haired boy returned politely. "How have you been? I heard it was pretty rough for you in Goldenrod..."

"What? How do you know about that?" Marina gasped.

"Whitney, the Gym Leader, told me. She also said you'd be coming, too. It's quite annoying how often she contacts me," Bugsy said with a helpless, typical smile. "But I learned to get used to it; lucky me for my Gym being the closest to hers," he added with a light-hearted sarcasm.

"You don't like her?"

"I wouldn't say that, but she can be a little…much."

Marina laughed at this. "I guess I see what you mean." She blinked as Bugsy suddenly observed her with a befuddled expression. "Bugsy?"

"Wait a moment..." Bugsy scratched his head, scrutinizing her as if he were trying to figure her out.

"What?" Marina asked, confused too.

"Didn't...Wasn't your jacket white and pink?" He began to circle around her, observing her outfit. "It looked almost the same...if I remember correctly."

Upon watching his curious actions, Marina suddenly burst into a fit of giggles, covering her mouth to stop herself. "Don't worry. It's a new outfit that I bought a few days ago in Goldenrod!" she managed to say. "I wanted to get something that's warmer for the winter, and I bought this because I felt like getting something that looks like my first outfit."

"Oh!" Bugsy immediately straightened up and returned to her side, laughing faintly in embarrassment. "You fooled me; I thought I was seeing things."

Marina giggled again. "Bugsy, can you give me a tour of the ruins?" she asked, changing the subject.

Bugsy shifted his crimson eyes toward her, relieved to move on. "Sure. I was just about to go to one myself to double check some things."

"Really?!" Marina exclaimed, bowing. "Thank you!"

"It's nothing," he replied. He turned away toward the numerous old structures that dotted the area around Lake Alph. "It's right over this way."

"Ooh, this is so much cooler than the pictures I've seen!" Marina exclaimed. She bounded into the dusty chamber built with old, clay brick walls. The walls themselves were marked with many deep carvings of a peculiar writing. A few oil lanterns lit the small room, revealing an interesting slab of brick and a bronze plaque at the chamber's center.

"Who's that?" a woman with short, black hair asked Bugsy as she walked away from the walls toward him.

"Just a curious Trainer," Bugsy said with an amiable glance at her. "She won't cause trouble, I promise."

Marina skimmed the walls, looking at the endless rows of imprinted hieroglyphs. Each symbol varied in shape, but each had a circle and a dot in the center, resembling an eye.

"They really do look like little alphabet creatures..." she mused softly.

She ran her had along the rugged writings. Her thoughts diluted into the back of her mind as she gently bounced her fingers along the line of foreign letters.

"S... U... I... K... U... N," she softly spelled out. She circled the letters, and moved onto the next small bunch. "E... N... T..."

"What are you doing?" Bugsy's voice asked her from behind.

Marina jumped, snapping her head up as she broke out of her trance. She looked over her shoulder and turned to face him. "Oh! I was just looking at these markings. They look just like letters."

"You were trying to read the hieroglyphs?" Bugsy, amused, raised an eyebrow at her reaction.

"It'd be quite difficult to do so without a reference," the young woman said in response, grinning at Marina from behind Bugsy.

Marina smiled halfway. "Oh..."

"They also resemble the species of Pokémon that appear in old ruins like these," she explained further, flipping through a few pages in her book "They're called Unown."

"Unown..." The blue-haired girl glanced at the ancient writing behind her. "I think I remember my brother telling me about that kind of Pokémon. But I forget what he said, exactly..."

Bugsy turned and strode to the center of the chamber. He tapped on a tray that rested on top of the slab, where numerous brick cubes rested on the tray. "I think this would be more interesting for you."

Marina followed after him with interest, passing the smiling assistant, who moved to the back of the room. "What is it?" she asked.

"It's a puzzle. You have to fit all these pieces into here," Bugsy told her, pointing at the square indent of the slab. "It makes a picture of a Pokémon. The sign there gives you a clue of what the Pokémon is. Want to give it a try?"

"Yeah!" Marina said, putting down her bag and Pokémon egg and grabbing a cube at random. She put it back on the tray for a moment, surprised at its weight, but she lifted it again with little effort.

"I think you'll like it better than what I have to do," Bugsy said quietly with a grin, "Sometimes it can get tedious here. So have fun for me." At that, he turned and made his way toward the back of the chamber, joining the studious black-haired lady.

After watching them converse for a moment, Marina took out a few cubes to observe the patterns on each one. From looking at them one by one, it served no obvious clues as to what the picture will yield if she completed it. She grabbed a few, placing them around the edges of the indentation.

Let's see...I should do the border first, she thought. That'll make it easier to build inside the puzzle. Once she had fixed the frame neatly, she counted the nine blocks left. Continuing to fit piece after piece, she glanced at the sign beside her.

"A Pokémon that hid on the sea floor. Eyes on its back scanned the area."

"Huh...Eyes on its back?" she murmured. She searched her memory, straining to remember a Pokémon that could even slightly resemble the description. A fuzzy recollection of the events in Goldenrod City Gym resurfaced in her mind instead, and she frowned as she built up the oval-shaped Pokémon. She slid the remaining two pieces snugly into the picture, forming the pair of dots Marina assumed were its eyes. The Pokémon's puzzle was colored, but extremely faded with age, and the "eyes" gazed up at her coated in red pigment.

I guess that's it. Right?

She paused, staring back at the picture. Her memory of the fight against Team Rocket's Arbok was vague and blurred out toward the end. She leaned over the relic in her best efforts to recall the entire event.

I was running with Eevee...and Arbok, it nipped near my ankle. So I fell...

But… There was crazy wind, and a Pokémon. Yeah, it was that really weird Pokémon that saved me! Whitney thought it was a bird Pokémon, but she definitely didn't see it. That thing looked nothing like a bird. It was…

Marina silently gasped to herself. It was called Deoxys! But how did I know that? She peered further at the picture, but nothing else unearthed itself. Why did I know that? I would've remembered seeing it before. And how could it talk to me?

"A favor..." her lips uttered soundlessly.

"Marina? You doing okay?" Bugsy suddenly asked. "You look troubled." Marina looked up, eyeing him from across the room, and wiped her face clean of the graveness she had while she was thinking.

She laughed nervously. "Yeah, I was just trying really hard to remember something. Oh, but hey, do you know about the odd Pokémon in Lake Alph?"

"Hm? Pokémon?" he said curiously, his assistant turning to Marina as well.

"The one that appears on Fridays?" she asked.

"Oh yeah. We've heard of that. Lake Alph has been more eerie in the night lately," Bugsy said slowly. "We've heard a lot about a Pokémon, but it's always too foggy at night to tell."

A light shiver of combined excitement, interest, and fear ran down her spine. "Really? It's true then?"

He laughed like she had, sheepishly combing his hair with his fingers as he looked back at the hieroglyphs. "Yeah, and I hate to admit it, but I stay as far from that lake as I can. I don't like spooky things like that."

"My sister is the exact same way," she said with a giggle. She glanced at the puzzle, and her eyes opened wide as she recognized the Pokémon instantly this time. "Wow, I can't believe I didn't see it sooner! It's one of the ancient fossil Pokémon: Kabuto!"

"Yes, that's the one. You've finished it?" Bugsy's partner confirmed.

"Yup!"

"Good job," she praised with a composed grin. "Feel free to look around, as long as you're careful."

"Okay! Thank you."

Marina smiled back and looked back down at the picture, her eyebrows rising. The dot-like eyes appeared oddly out of place. She pulled out the two blocks, switching their places. The eyes still seemed awkward, but the bottom portions of the blocks had an indentation that smoothly completed the Kabuto's first pair of claws.

There, that looks better, she thought, crossing her arms and tilting her head.

The border of the puzzle seemed to flash briefly, causing her to blink.

Before she could ponder it further, she stumbled as the ground below her quivered with severe instability. She looked down at the intricate patterns below her feet that vanished as the floor gave way. Marina cried out in shock as her feet skid and she plummeted into darkness. As the rush of wind howled around her, she could hear the archeologists calling her out as she was swallowed up by darkness.

It wasn't long before something broke her fall with a painful smack. For the seconds that passed, she saw nothing but black. But she yanked her eyelids apart, coughing on dust for a short time. The dim lighting around her swirled and brought nausea to her stomach, and she shut her eyes tightly.

"Argh...ow," Marina weakly groaned as she turned and lay on her back. Her entire body ached. Giving into her pain, she rested motionlessly and endured it with a few unsteady breaths. When the stinging and soreness had subsided enough, the girl rose to her knees. Letting out another pained sigh, she craned her neck upward. The ceiling revealed no gaping hole like the one she had fallen through.

She sighed uneasily, cradling her head a little longer.

Ow...I don't know how that happened, but that really hurt. Frowning, she moved her stiffened shoulder a little. To her relief, instead of blinding darkness, there was a string of lanterns along one side of the hallway. Large-print hieroglyphs streamed along the walls, some painted charcoal black. She gazed most curiously at the many Pokémon statues, which were sculpted expertly on stone pedestals.

Pushing herself to her feet and bearing the minor case of dizziness that followed, Marina slowly walked down the foyer. She turned a corner, facing an identical corridor. She wandered onward, feeling slightly uncomfortable.

It feels like I'm just walking in circles, Marina thought. Like a maze.

"Ano!"

A high pitched voice squeaked without warning. She backed into one of the unidentifiable sculptures with a start, searching around her.

"Hello?"

The dark corridors were still, shrouded in a cloak of silence. Her face twisted with paranoia.

Come on, I wasn't just imagining that, was I? Because I've imagined one too many things for me to stand lately. Her subtle breath traveled in and out of her mouth as she held the statue's pedestal behind her to steady her feet.

I mean, the dreams are cool, but passing out during my battle with Silver wasn't, and I don't know what the heck happened back at the Goldenrod Gym. It's like—.

"An!"

"Annonon!"

"Ananon!" The sounds started again, becoming louder as more individuals were heard, shouting similar variations of the original cry.

"H-Hey!" Marina called through the voices, swinging her head left and right. Her head throbbed intensely as she did this, and she sat down, glancing frantically at the hieroglyphs.

It's like things just keep getting weirder and weirder!

Just as she wondered this, she screamed in shock as the black letters peeled off of the walls, leaving their imprints behind as they floated in the air above the girl. Yet Marina calmed her heart as she watched them fly about merrily; they seemed relatively harmless.

"You're all Pokémon?" she asked. The group of living alphabets swerved and gathered around her, looping around and bumping into each other, not bound by gravity. Marina nearly grinned at their silly child's play. "What kind of Pokémon are you?"

One flew from the circular pattern and spun before flying inches in front of her face. Marina recoiled into the stone pedestal again, staring at the large eye of the thin letter-like Pokémon.

"Annon!" it cried.

"What? Wait a minute..." She gasped, though softly. "Unown!"

Pleased, the little Unown sung in a gleeful tone. It spun rapidly around her before flying back into the group.

The girl stared at them in wonder, touching her shirt's collar that hid the little black choker, whose existence she felt at every deep breath she took. "You really are little alphabet creatures. Geez, there's so many of you!"

The Unown continued to float amongst each other with ease. Their path disturbed as a long string of them lined up near Marina's line of sight, forming what appeared to be a short sentence. Marina blinked, standing with her pain weakening. Squinting, she took some time looking at the words and frowned in a trance-like concentration. The Pokémon hovered in place patiently.

"O...U...R...Our," Marina read, and very slowly continued. Her voice grew quieter as she slipped deeper into her gaze. "Wo...words... shall remain...here...for the...ages."

I really can read them, can't I? It just comes to me so easily, she reflected.

"Annon!" The Unown rejoiced, breaking their formation as the girl finished uttering the statement. An odd glowing resonated amongst them, and they quieted down. With silent precision, they formed another sentence—shorter this time. Again, Marina let her subconscious read it for her. She felt her choker tightened by just a little as she spoke.

"Hello... Who...are you?" A cold shiver zipped down her back, and she snapped out of her trance. She was plagued by a chilling feeling of being watched, but there was no one she could see. She looked back at the Unown. "Who am I? What do you mean? I'm Marina. Who...Who are you?"

The Unown floated their orbital course, processing the question and the answer like a messenger for two communicating entities. The faint glowing intensified for a short time. Four of them paused, wheeling their eyes at each other before forming a single word.

Marina paused, staring at them as she struggled to decipher their message.

"Ma… Maya?"

She gasped, covering her mouth as she looked around again. Though her eyes spotted only the Unown, she clenched her cold hands in discomfort. It felt as though the room had drastically dropped in temperature.

Maya? Who's that? It sounds familiar. Where have I heard it before?

"Anno!"

Marina looked up to see a shining cloud of white emitting from the alphabet Pokémon. A bright light caught her eye, and she jumped in terror. A layer of crystal extended around her, growing and infesting the corridors like a swift weed. She looked back up at the joyful Pokémon, which spun faster as they glittered with elevating power.

"What are you doing?" she shouted in panic.

"Anno!"

"Ano annno!"

"I don't understand you!" she called over them as she stared around her helplessly. "Make another sentence or something!"

They failed to give her any regard and continued growing the solid gem over the walls and ceiling, expanding even over the peculiar statues. She nervously broke into a run and charged into the barrier Unown. But an unseen force slowed her to a stop and pushed her back into the center of their revolving. Marina landed cumbersomely, gazing in a daze at the Pokémon. She frowned at the beautiful but abnormal jewel layer below her.

"Please, stop!" she yelled. She froze as a blazing sensation erupted from her neck. "Stop!" she screamed with all her remaining breath. She closed her eyes firmly, not daring to move and focusing all her thoughts on that single four-letter word.

Hearing her plea, the Unown silenced their excited chattering, and the zooming noise of the crystal's conquest subsided. Above, the supernatural lights dimmed.

Marina relaxed, breathing heavily. Fatigue engulfed her, and unable to resist it, she lied down and rested her head on her arm. The lasting pain from her fall numbed. Her choker loosened its grip, to her relief.

"Anno?"

"Anono..."

"Anon anno?

"Anno!" The Unown's little voices were heard in conversation, echoing off the walls. They made several strings of words repeating something, but the girl was far too tired to look up. The crystal-like substance vanished beneath her.

All went quiet. The dreary darkness surrounded her for an uncountable length of time. A calming autumn breeze tickled Marina's cheek. Marina, as soon as she could gather the energy to, gradually opened her eyes.

"Maree..?"

She blinked, staring into the adorable blue face of a baby Mareep, which looked up at her in curious awe. The blue-haired girl gazed in astonishment. "Hello...again?"

"Mareep! Mari, mareep!" The fluffy sheep gasped and scampered away from her.

Marina watched the little Mareep flee before releasing a gasp. Beside her was Lake Alph, sparkling in all its serene beauty in the sunset. The sky was bright orange, streaming into deep indigos and the rolling, rosy pink clouds.

"W-What...?" she uttered.

It's already evening? But how? She frowned in her confusion. And how did I get here? Was that all a dream? No, that can't be; I don't have my things. Then how…?

The girl sat there in wonder, confusion, relief, and exhaustion. As soon as she found the energy to, she gradually sat up. She was pulled from her daze and her restless thoughts when someone called her out.

"There you are! Are you alright?"

Marina looked up as she had had very morning, seeing Bugsy approach her. He was panting, though, and heavily as if he had run a marathon.

"Yeah, but..." she paused, unsure of what to say. It became awkwardly quiet.

"Good. Everyone's been looking all over for you. Glad to see you safe," Bugsy said with a meek grin. He straightened his posture. "You must be tired."

Look who's talking, Marina thought with a small, feeble smile in return.

"Yeah, I am."

"Okay then. Your stuff's back at the Alph Research Center. They have beds and such, too. I'll lead you there."

"But..." Marina stood, watching him turn away. Moving her shoulder tenderly without squinting in any apparent pain, she failed to follow Bugsy. The boy stopped some way away from her, looking back at her.

"Marina?"

"Oh...Nothing," Marina said softly and followed.

That was so odd. What on earth happened? Did the Unown do all that? She wondered. A strong hint of sleepiness still doused her senses as she walked. Her gaze shifted to the boy in front of her. Why isn't he asking any more questions?

"Bugsy...are you okay?"

Bugsy cast a tired glance at her and nodded. "Yeah, I am," he sighed, "You don't need to worry."

Soon after, the two arrived at the Research Center, the only modern building in the Ruins of Alph. Though they were together as they ate and discussed with the other frantic scientists, neither spoke another word to each other, with the exception of a sleepy, "Good Night," before they went to bed.