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A New Jeopardy Part Two
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"We'd better start walkin' then," Himself said. "Eastern Pennsylvania is quite a ways from New South Wales." "Not to mention the existence of the Pacific Ocean," Ando added, a bit of concern beginning to rise in her voice. "When has THAT ever stopped us?" Berti remarked. Ando just rolled her eyes. A low growl came through the woods from about a dozen yards to their left. Buggie looked around wildly. "Where's BIEBE?" she shrieked. ********** "HAAAAAAALP!" came a cry with a definite Canadian accent. "Canadians don't have accents!" huffed Anna Shadow. "HA!" retorted Wanda in her softest Mississippianese. "What about, 'There's a moose in the hoose! Get it oot, get it oot!'" "Well,"
Anna grumbled, "maybe we do do our 'ou's' a bit oddly...but
that's ALL! Besides, Biebe's Alaskan." "Nobody told Russell," Wanda replied smugly. "HAAAAAAALP!" repeated the desperate cry. "Why are we standing here discussing 'ou's' when my beloved Biebe may be being DIGESTED!" hollered Buggie, stomping her foot. Terry, Jack, and Hando were already crashing through the underbrush in the direction of the cry with its definite Canadian accent. "There's NO 'ou' in 'HAAAAALP!'," protested Anna. Buggie
arrived on the scene just as Terry knelt beside the prostrate Biebe.
"Is..is he...?" Her voice shook too much for her to
continue.
"Let me through," Franki said sharply, pushing Arthur to one side. She, too, knelt beside the prone sheriff, who lay silently, his eyes open, unblinking. Quickly and expertly she ran her hands over his body.
"Hey!" interrupted Ando. "How come SHE gets to be the nurse?? I wanna run MY hands all over his body TOO!" Hando growled, his nostrils tight and flaring, "She IS the nurse!" Marti snorted quietly. Biebe's flannel shirt had a jagged tear in it just below its collar. Franki unbuttoned the top few buttons, spreading the shirt open. A series of sharp teeth marks showed clearly just below his collar bone. "A WOUND? A character is actually suffering a real WOUND in an EPI???" Susan Guildford said, shocked to her core. "And it's not even Maximus, either," added the Countess, shaking her head in wonder at the development. "Surely it's not serious?" Berti remarked. "It IS serious!" Franki said grimly. "And don't call me Shirley." Joimus, standing just behind Franki, asked, "May I see the wound?" "I always knew the Pittsburgher was bloodthirsty," Ando said, not entirely under her breath. Joimus leaned down, her eyes widening as she beheld the row of teeth marks. "Oh, NO!" she cried, stumbling back. "Oh, NO??" repeated Buggie. "What do you mean, 'Oh, no!'?" Franki, too, turned to stare curiously at Joimus, who had paled considerably. "What is it, Joimus? Why does the sight of this row of teeth marks upset you so?" But Joimus had walked quickly to a nearby bush, pulling off a small clump of brownish-grey fur. Her shoulders slumped and she clamped her teeth down on her lower lip. "What have you found?" Maximus asked, coming up beside her. She raised her palm, eyes brimming with tears, "Transkeystoneursidaecanislupus," she said sadly. "What?"
he asked, not understanding. "Pennsylvania BearWolf," she explained, her face a mask of terrible concern. Seeing his continued puzzlement, she went on, "Back in the mountains of Eastern Europe they were known as WereBears, mutant cousins of the more familiar werewolves. In the spring of 1672, a female werebear hid amongst a shipment of pickled eel bound for Philadelphia, then escaped into the Blue Mountains. She eventually mated with a Keystone wolf and their offspring, the BearWolves have roamed the high ridges ever since." "My Biebe's been bitten by a BEARWOLF!" Buggie shrieked. "Will
he live?" Maximus asked seriously. "I fear so," Joimus said heavily. "You fear so?" Buggie repeated, her voice shrill with distraughtiness. "You FEAR my Biebe will live?" Joimus closed her eyes, nodding her head. Marti whispered to Jeff, "I had Biebe bitten by a bear once, but it was an honest-to-goodness REAL bear.Trust Joimus to make HERS a bearwolf!" "Yes," Jeff agreed, "but then you threw him off a cliff and had him attacked by escaped batteries." Marti rolled her eyes. "True, but it remains to be seen, now doesn't it, what Joimus will have happen to the sheriff NEXT." "There IS one thing!" Joimus exclaimed, suddenly remembering a bit of arcane anti-bearwolf lore. "Does anyone have an Energizer AAA battery on them?" "A BATTERY?" grumped Marti. "Does the woman even know HOW to have an original thought?" "I've got a Ray-o-vac D," Jeffrey offered. "No," Joimus said, "it must be an Energizer AAA." "Energizer?
As in...BUNNY?" asked Phyllis and all eyes turned toward the
English wabbit. "DO you...?" Joimus inquired hopefully. Bunny reached deeply into her side pocket, past her supply of handcuffs and her barbed wire samples, past her collection of pistachio shells and her telegram from Cher. Her fingers probed this way and that until at last the corners of her lips curved upwards into a smile and she held out a single Energizer AAA. "Ask Sid to bite it in half," Joimus said, startling everyone but Ando who always expected such talk from the Pittsburgher. Sid took the small battery from Bunny, frowning at it. "Bite it in half," he repeated. "Why?"
"You'll see," Joimus said, rather unrevealingly. He sighed and chomped down on it, handing the two pieces, severed ends up, to Joimus, who took them carefully in her hands and knelt beside Biebe. "Spread his shirt open," she asked Franki. "Hey!" said Buggie, wriggling in between the two women. "If anybody's going to be spreading my Beibe's shirt, it's gonna be ME!" "Quickly!" Joimus urged. "This must be done before...." "Before WHAT?" Buggie gasped. "Before it...can't be done," Joimus replied enigmatically. "Wh..what?" Buggie gasped again, but Joimus' eyes flashed and she commanded, "NOW!" so Buggie pulled back Biebe's shirt, exposing the series of 6 teeth marks. There were four small ones with a larger one on either end. Pressing her lips together in concentration, Joimus let drops of battery acid fall into each mark in turn. "She may have bear bites and batteries," Jeff remarked to Marti, "but do you think she'll toss him off a cliff like you did?" "I tossed him off the cliff BETWEEN the bear bites and the batteries," Marti replied smugly. "She's already missed her chance!"
The cast watched, their collective breaths bated, as the battery acid sizzled its way into the small wounds, sending up little puffs of acrid smoke. "This reminds me of the Abu Simbel grey lizard whose ear liquid Jeffrey squeezed into Jack's mouth back in the deserts of Egypt in an unsuccessful attempt to revive him from the stupor induced by his tasting of the Palauan squid juice in Russenaten's tomb," annsmac said rather lengthily. Marti smiled at Jeff. "That was in the 'Saving Captain Jack' epi storyline which I cleverly renamed 'Seriousosity' so no one would have any idea what the heck it was about and give up and go read 'Swept Away Bayou'. "Did it work?" the young plumber asked. "One can only hope," she grinned. Franki, whose medical experience for some odd reason did not include the use of battery acid drippings into open wounds, was, admittedly, curious as to the results of said treatment. Biebe had not blinked in quite some time now, and other than a sudden growth of small toadstools on his tongue (which Joimus assured them was only temporary), there seemed to be little change in his overall condition. Buggie, though, knew better than anyone that Biebe never really WORE overalls in spite of his fondness for denim, and so her interest lay more in his level of consciousness than in the condition of any overalls. Suddenly she recalled Joimus' earlier fear that Biebe would live. "Is...is it... ok...now...if he lives?" she asked tremblingly. "Probably," Joimus answered, her brow creasing. "What
does the battery acid DO?" Franki asked, always eager for an
increase in medical knowledge.
"I've only read about its effect," Joimus admitted. "I've never actually seen it used, but the acid is supposed to mix with the saliva from the bearwolf's bite and lessen the degree of overall transformation." "He
doesn't WEAR overalls!" Buggie protested. "They can't be
transformed if he doesn't WEAR them!" If the Floridian had had
a rope, she would have been quite near its end. Hando,
being helpful, remarked, "Well, my TWP's have sure been
transformed a lot in the last several storylines." Ando studied
the white denim legwear, appreciative that its form and coloration
were back to normal. "I'm not talking jeans, Buggie," Joimus explained. "I'm talking GENES!" Sudden realization hit Buggie like a wheelbarrow of ripe squash. "You... you... mean ... he could turn into ... into ... a .. a .. BEARWOLF??" Ando, who tended to like her characters bald and lean, offered, "Well, he always DID sorta remind us of a bear, didn't he?" "That would be a TEDDY bear," Marti corrected, knowing whereof she spoke. "But how does one protect oneself from a bearwolf?" asked Berti practically. "In the lore," Joimus said, "it's only by tossing them off a cliff." "Ah HA!" Jeff chortled, catching Marti's appalled eyes. "I KNEW she'd get a cliff in here somewhere!!" "Wait a minute here," Franki said, finally able to pull her gaze away from where the wound edges were turning lime green. "Just HOW lessened does the acid make the transformation?" "It's only a theory, Franki," Joimus said heavily. "No one has ever gotten to a bearwolf bite victim with an Energizer AAA battery in time before." "Somehow that strangely makes sense," Berti said wonderingly. "Well, what IS the theory?" Franki pursued. "Without
the acid drip, Biebe would become a complete bearwolf at the next
full moon...which is tomorrow, I believe...and eat us all...well,
except for particularly undigestible parts of Sid." "And WITH the acid drip," Franki probed. "Well, the theory is that with the acid diluting the bearwolf saliva, the Energizer Bunny cells are then able to merge with those of the bearwolf's and mitigate the transformation into a...." "A WHAT?" shouted Buggie. "A...bunnybear," Joimus sighed. "But it's only a theory." Just then a terrible roaring noise came to their ears, growing steadily and quickly closer and closer to the hapless gathering atop the wooded ridge.
Next
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