I am a Mangalore. If you have seen "The Fifth Element", you probably have the wrong idea about us. In the movie you have only met members of a vociferous militant Mangalore minority. Most of us have actually long ago gotten fed up with all this "dying for the nation's honor" business, and prefer to use our shape-changing abilities to lead normal lives with jobs and families.

When the Death Planet appeared, my short-sighted militant compatriots, predictably, teamed up with its Terrestrial crony, Mr Zorg.

The rest of us didn't follow suit. A friend of mine works as a janitor at Cryolab, the facility where they reconstructed Leeloo, which is how I got the latest news so fast. He and I decided that the only sensible thing was to help Leeloo and Korben Dallas - otherwise the entire galaxy's sentient life could, if you'll pardon my French, kiss its collective bottom goodbye. My buddy tracked down Mr Dallas' address via his cab number, and I went to work.

I bribed Korben's cat and took her shape - that was actually me eating the Thai dinner with Korben, while his real cat was sharing a can of tuna with a ginger tom of her acquaintance on the next block.

When the police started searching the building, I assumed the shape of Korben's no-good neighbor, the one in the habit of shaving with a dagger. Getting the cops to bag me instead of the real Korben was ridiculously easy. Between that and the Mangalore force holding up the cops in order to steal "Korben Dallas", the real Korben had time to get his act together and be off to save the world.

And you know the rest.

After the troubles they actually rebuilt Fhloston Paradise, and I landed a job there with Security and Inter-Species Relations. It's pretty quiet nowadays, I can't complain about the pay, and I even get to use the tourist class recreational facilities in my time off.

See you around someday!

/Achrya the Managalore