Even for a nineteen-year-old, shape-shifting alien, Carl has got a lot of problems. But he's gotten used to depending on himself ever since he was banished to earth for a heresy crime he didn't commit. His superiors, finding themselves against a deadline, give Carl three direct orders: 1. Escort and protect the prophetic "Chosen One," a sixteen-year-old earthling named Dash Davenport, to fight the Doom Mob-an army that has invaded Carl's home planet. 2. Visit your dying mother-who once tried to kill him. 3. Search for a mysterious weapon called "The Circlette"-that no one has ever seen before. That would be enough to give any guy a headache, but Carl also has to cope with his psychic girlfriend who only tells him what he wants to hear, a spaceship full of weirdoes that don't seem to have the wits to fly their rickety ship across the street- let alone to another planet, and an intergalactic assassin from the Doom Mob named Morgandy. When Carl discovers that Dash Davenport is a pacifist and is planning to read a crummy speech about peace to the army of killers he's been "Chosen" to fight, Carl begins to think that the prophecy is as dubious as the lottery numbers in a fortune cookie. With the fate of his planet at stake, he secretly teams up with a deranged librarian to devise a plan to defeat the army and their secret weapon- disobeying the prophecy and risking a death sentence for treason. What Carl doesn't realize is that Dash and Morgandy have secrets of their own.