The Universe's Mixer

Life and been quiet and pleasant enough in apartment #5. Leeloo had discovered shopping, and had set about renovating the small apartment that she shared with Peter. It didn't look like the same space as what they'd had in die Festung, and that was all right; that was good. Change was part of life, and no one should cling to any one static thing for too long. Stagnation blunted everything.

But there was one thing that troubled Leeloo - one thing that had never sat well with her once they arrived. She had seen her best friend on the first day, but no other time had he come to her. She missed Bran. She missed Eric.

After having spent hours in the library during her exploration of the City, Leeloo found the closest part of the Wall around the City, swam out to it, and spent a good long time trying to climb it. But with her wetness and the smoothness of the wall, it seemed impossible. Finally, exhausted and sore, she fell back into the water and leisurely swam back to the City shore. That was not the way.

Next, she tried a boat and mountain climbing gear. With a rope to the boat tied around her waist, spikes strapped to the soles of her feet, and an ice pick in either hand, she finally scaled the Wall. And then she sat there, through the rest of the day and into the twilight. She would wait.

She would wait until Bran found her and brought Eric to her. He had to come. He always did, when she found their Wall. And this, she had decided, was their Wall.

Opportunity presented itself in the oddest fashion.

The afternoon that an argentinosaurus exploded through the outside wall of his cell, Cleric Brandt, First Class, had been exercising. In Blackgate, there was precious little else to do than that, and he was stronger and in better condition than he'd ever been in his entire career. It made him itch to find Cleric Preston and put him to the test. Finish the dual they'd only just started before Brandt was pulled into that strange world of dinosaurs and sense offenders.

Sweating and disbelieving, Brandt pressed himself up against the back wall of his cell and watched the large beast swipe through the wall of his confinement -- and out into the corridor. For the first time in months, Brandt saw the sky. He grinned.

His excitement was detestable, and he quickly stamped it from his face. Instead, he focused on what was going on outside. The dinosaur that crashed into his prison was not alone. There was another - and it looked like a tyrannosaurus - that pursued the larger, slower-moving beast responsible for his jailbreak. They two were moving off and away from the prison, which was just as well. If the beasts were distracted by each other, they wouldn't notice him as he escaped.

Brandt paused, then looked out toward the corridor. He heard, beyond the clashing of dinosaurs, the jangling of keys on a belt and the pounding of booted feet on cement. Brandt edged toward the gap in his cell and waited until the guard burst into view. He took him out with a few well-placed blows, crushing the larynx and pulverizing certain nerve clusters to cripple the man as he died. Unhooking the keys with one efficient swipe, Brandt looked across the corridor to the cell of the one who had spent time these months talking through his ideals.

Ideals that were not out of alignment with Brandt's. Sense offenders needed to be cleansed from the City. Others needed to be converted to the truth path of humanity's salvation. They two could work together toward these goals - Brandt and Bane. The decision was not difficult.

Moments later, the two were standing in the corridor together. Brandt grinned again.