The Universe's Mixer

She'd gone out at night, eager to find her friend Eric. Though she could have made the journey across the water to the edge of the City, to that wall that overlooked the eerie forest beyond, she chose instead to try to find him in the City proper. A wall... Always, they met on a wall, and as she walked the nighttime streets, a wall was what she was looking for.

After some wandering, she found herself in a rougher part of town. It didn't concern her; she knew well enough that she could tend to herself, and Peter was only a panic spike away besides. Peter, she thought, was the perfect guardian. The perfect everything. Not quite her everything, but if it hadn't been for her duty to the people of Earth, he could have been.

At last, she found a suitable wall. It was broken down and rough, but perfect for scaling for all its imperfection. She easily scrambled up the side, her hands and nimble feet using the crumbling mortar and bricks to ease her passage up. And then she perched and waited, feet swinging easily against the side. Eric would come soon. She knew it in the center of herself. He always found a way to her.

She hadn't expected anyone else in the darkness.

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.

(Violence warning)

His drunk was a hefty several days deep. Like the phantom of Bishop had predicted, it was not a far fall from drinking bagged blood to the live stuff flowing directly out of breathing people. Once he hit a certain point in his slowing mental clarity, he began to lack a conscience as well.

It had started as a controlled descent. The first human Aidan had taken had been a mugger in a dark alleyway. That had been good, though he'd frightened the man who had been the victim into fainting. Not caring if he'd been seen or not, Aidan finished drinking the mugger and left. From there he'd gone to a homeless woman, which would destroy him with guilt as soon as he was sober again, and had only gotten worse. The unleashed vampire moved through the City occasionally taking victims of his own, people that were minding their own business. Including the mugger and transient, there were four before he got to the strip club and stumbled his way inside.

Being late in the afternoon, there weren't many patrons about, and there weren't that many on staff, either. They all mostly ignored the newcomer, dim lighting and a ducked head hiding the smear of blood across pale flesh. He sat in a chair close to the stage and lost all anonymity. Aidan became a target for the roving dancers and the blacklight lit up what he'd been trying to hide.

He was greeted with a smile, followed by wide fearful eyes. It was all the signal the predator needed to strike. Fangs found beautifully exposed flesh quite easily, and then more, Aidan ripped through the club quickly, tearing open throats and feasting on the lives he was ruining. There wasn't much care given to what he was doing, he wasn't gentle, he was wasteful. Pools of red spread across outdated, dingy carpeting as Aidan hunted them one by one.

Like a cat, he played with them. Letting them run, reveling in the scent of their fear. He was Darkness, he was Death, he was once more the creature that humans and vampires alike feared. The boogeyman. The tale that adults tell their children to make them behave.

Aidan laughed and taunted, he sang old songs and whispered meaningless sweet nothings into the ears of his prey right before he bit into them. He was having a grand old time. The crying, the terror, delicious all of it.

He could hear the last one whimpering in a corner, behind a door. Thinking that she was safe. Already bleeding, she was simple to track down. But he played with her still. Standing on the other side of the door as if he didn't know she was back there, then turning and starting to walk away heavily to give her the illusion of safety. Just as he heard her sigh of relief, Aidan whipped the door closed and grinned down at her.

She screamed.

Leeloo had discovered rooftops.

More specifically, she'd discovered rooftops at midnight.

It quickly turned into a game. How far could she travel in a single sprint without having to pause for any reason? How high could she go while choosing only rooftop-to-rooftop jumps that went up? And then, when she noticed she was in a darker part of town with more lights that were destroyed, she learned a new twist to the game. How many could she protect?

She'd never felt this alive; she'd never felt as if she'd fit so well anywhere before.

As she stood over a group of mostly-unconscious lumps of muscle and ill intent, the only thanks she got was a pair of slender footfalls fleeing down the unlit street. It was enough, though. She grinned, then grasped the drainpipe attached to the side of the building where she stood, pulled herself up quickly enough - bracing her foot briefly on the nearby trash bin - until she was back again on the rooftops.

Running.

The conveniences of the City were a delight, and one that Leeloo very quickly learned and enjoyed. As she did, it seemed that the things she most loved were quietly placed into their apartment. A working television set. A Blu-Ray player. A Playstation 4. A microwave. Tablets that could be microwaved to generate full roast chicken dinners. Chicken was good, Leeloo had discovered. Together, sne and Peter could eat two chickens all by themselves.

He'd mentioned something about superior metabolisms. Leeloo laughed at the obviousness of the statement. Of course. Of course they had. She was a supreme being, and Peter represented the best of humanity so far. Of course their metabolisms were better than most.

Better, of course, because it allowed them to eat all the chicken they wanted. Chicken was very good.

When Peter slipped away from the apartment for a few hours, Leeloo tried not to worry. He hadn't seemed at peace with what was, and that troubled her. She decided to make good use of the time he was away and clean.

She cleaned the already spotless kitchen. The bathroom. Their bedroom. The living room. She brought in cut flowers for the table. She brewed coffee. She set the table for a beautiful meal, including candles and silver and china, just as he'd shown her some weeks before. She turned on some music that she liked and danced to it in the middle of the living room. She picked out a few Blu-Ray entertainment disks on the coffee table in front of the TV and filled the couch with pillows and blankets.

There was nothing else to do, after a few hours, but wait for him to come home. She opened the windows wide, then sat on the floor in front of the biggest one and watched the moon come up from over the tops of the buildings.

In all the time they'd spent together, mostly all they'd done was work on improving the state of the apartment that Eric invited Leeloo to share with him. When they first started, the windows were exploded out and glass covered the inside of the space. That was the best of it. The worst.. Leeloo knew it'd been blood. She tried not to show her feelings to Eric, knowing that it hurt him more to see it himself - but it had been very difficult to watch him clean it. He wouldn't allow her to help. She'd tried.

But as the weeks fluttered by, the place became more and more livable. Finally, there came a day when they both sat back and realized - there was nothing else to do to make the place whole again. Neither said it, but they shared a look and a smile. It was good enough - that. And, Leeloo had learned more about Eric while working beside him than she was likely to have otherwise.

She liked him. She liked him quite a bit. He was full of opposites - kind and dark, broody and considerate. He treated her as well as Peter had, but with one difference: he never really touched her. There were no hugs, there were no kisses, and he didn't wrap her up with him at night. After having experienced that, and having thought it normal, the difference was strange. She'd not asked about it. Maybe she would, one day.

But today, it could wait. Today, he was taking her 'house shopping' - though she didn't know exactly what that meant. He said she should pick out whatever she wanted, but as she walked into the store with him at her side, she wasn't sure exactly what that might be. Then the aisles opened up to her, and her eyes widened.

All of this could be theirs? Leeloo picked up a whisk.

"What's this?" she asked, waving it about experimentally. It didn't seem like a weapon.

The weather in the City was pretty much always perfect. There were days with rain, but they were still mostly warm. But there were still seasons. In fall the leaves fell (the trees were never bare, though), in winter there might be some snowflakes (never anything like the one great storm where the City had gotten carried away), and summers were warm and sunny and nobody had school.

Still, this year, the City felt like celebrating spring. Not any particular holiday. Just spring in general. There were new people around, there were couples in love, and it wanted to have a great big party for everyone.

Overnight, it set up the great festival. Streets all around the park were closed off so that people could walk around without issue. The park itself was expanded to over twice the normal size. A great clearing was made in the center, stretching from one side to the other. There needed to be lots of room.

Through this clearing the City placed tents, stands, and tables. These were filled with food and wares of all types. There were representatives for all the popular shops, as well as some that nobody had ever seen there before. There were stands for balloons for the kids, too, free of charge. And flowers absolutely everywhere. Woven into the stands themselves, laying on tables, set up in vases, growing in every patch that the City was sure nobody would accidentally step on them. Colorful ribbons, some as large as crepe streamers, also decorated everything. The City wanted as much color as it could possibly get.

At one end of the clearing the City placed a small carnival. Rides, games, everything it could think of. Even a petting zoo, though some of the animals within weren't typical farm animals that usually went in petting zoos. At the other it placed a few stages for performances. Concerts, plays, musicians. The stages were all contained within their own invisible sound barriers, as to not disturb one another, but the noise from all could be heard on the main promenade.

It put signs up all over, put notices in mailboxes, ads on the radio, commercials on television, and even made Candy and Frank talk about it on the morning news.

The celebration would go from sunrise to midnight. At sunset, the City would have a bonfire, complete with a pig roast and s'mores. At that time, it would move the park closer to the water, creating a beach between for the bonfire to settle on.

It was a fascination to Leeloo that they were suddenly no longer trapped on the island where she'd first been pulled. After having slept some in Peter's very comfortable bed in this very comfortable apartment, Leeloo woke to find herself alone.

Untroubled, she got up, went through her morning routine, and was on the cusp of stealing more of Peter's clothes, when she looked to the bed. It was made already - strange; she hadn't made it - and there was an outfit waiting for her at the foot. Finding that she far better enjoyed it than the other clothes meant for Peter in this apartment, she slinked out of what she'd been wearing, left it in a pool on Peter's floor, and tugged on what had been left for her.

Then she left the apartment for the first time, and started exploring.

By the time she made it to the lobby, she knew her way very well around the apartment complex. The lobby was something different. She stuck her head into the fireplace and looked up the chimney; she explored the refrigerator in the common dining area and stole an orange from the bottom drawer; she went to the courtyard pool and swished her foot in what she saw as a concrete pond, and then she wandered back inside, intent on exploring the world past this building.

As she approached the door, someone stepped in front of her from the corridor just ahead. She recognized the way he carried himself.

"Eric!" she said, happy to have another friend here.

( Working on our night moves... )

It used to be he could count on less than two hands how many dimensions he'd been too. John didn't think he could still claim that after landing head first in the land of zombies...oh excuse him, Netvores...and now suddenly standing in the middle of the streets of a city. This one wasn't a crumbling city without all the fun toys like running water and electricity so it was a step in the right direction.

For a minute he frowned feeling...something. No idea what it was only for a minute he was dead sure he'd landed in Bette Noir again. But it wasn't that. This wasn't that annoying city he'd ended up in with Tefe and Gemma. It wasn't any place he'd ever been.

And there was no sign of Zee.

Bollocks.

"Right. Shit's gone pear shaped again inn't?" At least if there was no sign of Zee there was also no sign of baby Batman. Now baby Supes he could stand to have but it didn't look like that was going to happen either. John pulled one of the precious packs of Silk Cuts Zee had magicked up for him out of his pocket and lit it. Looked like you could get more here and this wasn't the sort of thing he wanted to face without a smoke.

"Okay universe. What d'you want this time?"

When the world began shaking, there was a sudden onslaught of panic, fear, and confusion. It had been some time since Peter had been in a large enough population to need to shield himself regularly, and his level of comfort had left him a bit exposed. When the cacophony struck his mind, Peter flinched, mentally and physically, withdrawing into himself completely, curling up defensively, blanking his mind against the assault.

When he came back to himself, he was standing in a hallway. And he was lying in his bed, in his room on the TARDIS. There was an utterly confusing sensation of being two places at once, and he could clearly recall the caravan that had just left die Festung, where he had been standing a moment ago. But there was a set of keys in his hand, and the feel of Leeloo's hand wrapped in that same hand. There was a shudder of movement, and Peter tried to fight away from the conflicting information, trying to find where he was between the two sets of input. Then pain split his head, and memories flooded in - the savage world, the dinosaurs... the TARDIS, the inky woman.... He reached for something steady, something constant, like the solid feel of Evey's strength in his mind, but even that was split in two! Two versions of Evey Hammond, one from that first body's experiences in the broken world, and the other as he had last seen her, teetering on the edge of despair, feeling lost and alone.

Shields slammed into place, and Peter found himself on the ground again, curled upon himself at the door of an apartment, The keys in his hand were digging painfully into his palm, but he embraced that pain as it was the only sensation. A singular sensation, not that horrid duality that had threatened to rend him apart.

With a shaking breath, he forced his limbs to relax, moving into a sitting position. He was a single entity again. His memories were intact, though slightly altered - he could remember arriving here shortly after leaving die Festung... but at the same time, re remembered the later attack of snow dinosaurs in that world, the sudden arrival on the savage world and the experiences and adventures there, and then, once more, arriving at this location.

How? What? And strangest of all, an overwhelming sense of awareness, of life, of sentience all around him. He sensed the awareness focus on him for a fleeting instant, but before Peter could pinpoint just what it might have been, it retreated beyond his reach.

He shook his head, hard. The TARDIS had sometimes felt like that, but this had not been the TARDIS.

Slowly, cautiously, Peter eased the strength down on his mental shields. He reached for one mind, but the thought instead went to two: Evey?