There was a sudden flash as Terry whipped out his equipment. Bud stepped quickly to one side to avoid being crushed. "Now," Terry began, "we....

************

....shall..." but he was nearly knocked from his feet by an unseen form brushing past him. His equipment swung widely out of control, slamming into Bud's kneecap. "Damn!" roared the detective, dropping his chairback onto the jungle floor where it was immediately devoured by starving termites. He narrowed his eyes as cast members in epis are wont to do. It would be hard to replace that...there being a paucity of office chairs scattered about the backwaters of Uganda. "Ooops! Sorry!" came a friendly voice. Bud's ears perked, used as they were to the nuances of vocal tones in the interrogation rooms of the LAPD. He had long, long ago lost count of the numbers of teeth he'd helped to the floor with that neat little jamming motion he'd perfected with his gun barrel.

"Charles?" he asked, though certain that the roomie was likely the only invisible person who would be on his way to rescue Nash from becoming pi. "Yes," replied Charles as he helped steady the K&R agent, still staggering a bit from the latest pounding his equipment had taken. Terry then let out a truly piercing yelp as the red pushpin finally arrived at the lower regions of the tree...having gathered a great deal of momentum in its long descent...embedding itself deeply into an exposed portion of what had been until lately the best equipment in the world.

Meanwhile, back in the distant clearing, Juditha was jumping up and down on Jack's toes, her efforts to uncurl them proving less than effective so far. Hando, ever helpful in his creative, Melbournish sort of way, solved the problem with one hearty swing of his baseball bat. The Captain's toes immediately uncurled. Ando grinned as only a former Welshwoman who has spent great amounts of time admiring Hando's baseball bat could manage. She sighed. If only there were a carton of cold milk somewhere about the clearing. Juditha removed Aubrey's tall black boots from their recent carrying place within her sash, settling herself on the bung grasses at his feet and attempting to slide the footwear onto his foots...er...feet. It took some effort and she was left not quite able to decide which was worse for bootsliding activities...the wide sweeping curves of the curled toes...or the swollen tissue and all the blood. "Ah...HA!" cried BertiVet in some triumph. "I KNEW she would get blood back into the very next epi!" As glad as Jack was to have his boots on again, he did not feel all that particularly grateful to Hando for some reason.

Joimus had nestled herself, crutch-like, under one of Maximus' armpits. No longer really needing the aid of her services in such a fashion, Maximus nonetheless allowed her to keep her position. After all, more snow would shortly be arriving in Pittsburgh, and she looked so warm there, with his wide faux fur curved about her head like that. If only several dozen giant Ugandan leeches were not trying to bear their young in the depths of the fur, her happiness would have known no bounds.

Zack was busily handing around the early 19th century whaling outfits that happened to be lying conveniently about the Ugandan jungle just when most needed. Jack removed the leather thong he used to bind his golden locks when in British seacaptain mode, shaking the blond tendrils free about his shoulders. Colin, if truth be told, was a bit jealous. His sideburns didn't sweep his shoulders like that, ending as they did a good half inch above his collar bone. If he managed to avoid riding in cars on beaches, he hoped...someday...to be able to twist them up in a leather thong like the good Captain when heading into battle.

Aubrey, his brown coat completely hiding his glowing epaulettes, had just finished his, "This clearing is our home...this clearing is England" speech. It didn't go over quite so well with this crowd, the only other Englishman being Maximus' accent.

Amanda didn't care. Once and for all she would be saved from the whales. Whether by Aussies or Americans...or even a Welsh Baptist Virgin...what mattered it? Her heart sang. Ando smacked her, never having overcome her aversion to "She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain." How could Amanda have known about the time the rust-colored male chicken had saved the former Welshwoman from being totally enveloped by the cloud of rampaging dandelion puffs on the slopes above the Swansea public library? And, so, when Amanda's heart sang, "We will kill the old red rooster when she comes...." something deep and never quite healed, snapped inside Ando.

Aubrey looked over his assembled crew, shaking his head in concern. The matheaters had more than twice their numbers, twice their....what the heck weapons DID his crew have anyway? Biebe's hockey stick was now in the bellies of several thousand locusts. Cort had used up the last of his bullets saving Sue the-not-at-the-moment-Vile from a particularly large scorpion attempting to enter her ear. The sheriff was not actually sure he could believe her protestations that the new hole in her lobe was just the right size for the earrings she was thinking of buying next she passed a Harrod's. East and Egan both had ropes and Hando DID have that baseball bat of his. But Jeffrey's bottle of soy sauce and Andy's crusty soup tureen were weapons of somewhat more doubtful effectiveness in hand-to-hand combat. Steve could, however, be deadly at 10 yards with the business end of his cigar butt and Corbett swung a pretty mean dogtag. Thank heavens for Maximus and the gladness of his gladius!

Wanda suddenly pushed her way through the Whalerly- disguised characters. "Hey, don't forget about the womenfolk!" she said, brandishing her newly-mastered pair of chopsticks. Diz joined her, grinning over the accuracy she had developed in flinging Smallville DVDs on the battlefields of Scotland. BertiVet clutched a particularly wicked-looking pair of dognail clippers. There were things...unmentionable...that Phyllis could do to a foe with the severed spine of a large volume of O'Brien. BugMomDogPug unwove one of her baskets, the long sharp points of wicker protruding between her fingers like an X-person's. But most horrific of all was the Memorex keyboard sticking out of Joimus' gossamer backpack. Aubrey smiled. There was no way the matheaters could have twice THIS array of fine weaponry!

COULD they?

The progress of the main contingent of castmembers was a bit slowed by the way Aubrey limped along the path, muttering English seasorts of things under his breath. Russell grinned slightly. He Himself could not have muttered very much more effectively than the Captain. Though...along with nicotine and caffeine, not to mention wine women and song...well, maybe not song so much...he had cut back a bit on expletive creativity. Ah, the demands made upon a boxerdad.

"I fear," Joimus whispered to Maximus, "that Nash is so fragile he may not last the epi."

"Yes," agreed the General, "the disadvantage of being a mathematician is that he gets to look the matheathers in the eye."

"Oh....puh-LEEZE!" groaned Sid, "Don't you two ever tire of MaxiSpeak?"

Maximus looked puzzled. "Sometimes I am tired from battle, Sid, especially when pacing agitatedly in courtyards. But MaxiSpeak...well...it is acceptable." And, as everyone knows, when a matter was found acceptable by the Commander of the Felix legions, the catapults jolly well stayed where they were! Drat!, thought Sid. So much for his next round of plotting. Maximus smiled slightly. How familiar he was becoming with the circuit boards of the Chipman. In fact, though it was a thing he had shared with no one...not even Joimus...ever since compressing the plasma ball then having blue electricity play hopscotch about his person, he had understood Sid all TOO well! His fine brow creased as he recalled.... troublesome...thoughts that had flashed unbidden through his brain. Thoughts that might well, alas, cause ill winds to blow in future epis.

Meanwhile, at the base of the 97 foot tall tree, Terry had gone all white from the embeddedness of the red pushpin. What with his mud-camo, the effect was quite zebra-like in a strange, Dr. Seussey sorta way.

Bud's fascinated stare was interrupted by Ann, she of the extraordinary equipment- tending skills. "ENOUGH!" she cried, shaking her little fist angrily at the way her character had been toyed with of late. The evil epi queen had tried to convince her that she was innocent, that it was bored Olympic gods and goddesses moving little Terry figurines about some model arena that had caused it all...but she knew better. "Listen, you!" she said with clenched teeth, grabbing the invisible Charles by the scruff of his neck. "I want Stephen...and I want him NOW!"

"But...but...but..." Charles butted. She shook the roomie with great...umm...vim and vigor...until the doctor appeared. Were it not for his walking stick in one hand and his large phasmid in the other, Stephen would have plopped right over on the bung grasses. As soon as his eyeballs had stopped rolling in complete circles, she growled at him. "Get it out!"

The good doctor blushed. "Get WHAT out, my dear lady?"

"THAT!" snapped Ann, pointing at the tiny fraction of the red pushpin still visible on Terry's equipment. Stephen leaned close, studying the...situation. "My," he said softly, "that IS in there deeply, isn't it!"

Bud, in helpful mode, whipped out his walnut cracker. "I can lift his ribs for you," he said a little too brightly, those many nights of pounding suspects into pulp in darkened motel rooms reflected in his tone.

Terry just moaned and sank to his knees, his lips pressed tightly together in a firm line as he attempted to stifle his urge to scream wildly.

"That won't...or may not...be necessary," Stephen replied as he reached into his shoulder bag and withdrew an amputation saw. "Is there sand?" he inquired of no one in particular. "I wish...." he said softly.

"What...what do you wish, Doctor," asked Ann.

Stephen looked down at her, being so tall as he was that he looked down on nearly everybody, "I wish we were at sea. I always...amputate...better with a wildly pitching vessel beneath my feet." Then he looked at Bud. "Would you happen to have an old blurry mirror I might borrow?"

"Mirror?" asked Ann. "Why do you need a mirror?"

He rubbed his angular chin. "It's this five o'clock shadow. I'd like to shave first."

Ann kicked his shin. "Get on with it!" she fairly bellowed.

Sweat ran down Terry's face. "Ann..." he managed to groan. "Noooooo....don't let him...take it." His seagreen eyes swam with pain. Without his equipment, what would he be? Just another run of the mill K&R expert saving husband after husband for faithless wives. He couldn't go on...he couldn't manage...not without his...equipment.

Ann's eyes narrowed in determination. There HAD to be some other way...some way not involving total...amputation. "What about...what about..." she muttered as she rummaged through the doctor's bag, "what about THESE?" She held up Stephen's tweezers, blowing off a few clinging eyebrow hairs.

"Hmmmm?" the surgeon pondered, looking back and forth from the amputation saw to the tiny pair of tweezers.

Ann felt a tug on her skirt. "Th... the... twee... tweezers,.... Ann...please....the tweezers," gasped Terry, his eyes wide with desperation.

"Does it really make so much of a difference?" asked Bud. Terry nodded his head as vigorously as he could manage.

"Well, then..." said the doctor, as he took the tweezers and in one smooth, quick motion had popped out the pushpin. "But amputation has MUCH more of a dramatic effect in a storyline, you know."

"I'll...I'll try not to act...too disappointed," Terry said grimly as Ann helped him to his feet.

Just then the rest of the cast arrived on the scene. "Stephen!" cried Jack, placing the palm of one hand on the back of the doctor's head and grinning largely as he said, "Still alive, old friend? The gods must love you!"

"No," whispered Maximus quickly to Joimus, who was prepared to bop the Captain for line-theft. Just then, Nash's wail resounded downward from the treetop.

"Good thing we've got on our whaler disguises," said Jack. "There be wails here!"

Indeed, far up in the canopy, Nash had locked eyeball to eyeball with the leader of the matheaters. The mathematician was not quite what the pygmy matheater had somehow expected.

"K!" he screamed, losing his grip on the branch and fell, tumbling head over heels down, down toward the clustered cast.

Ricocheting off Hando's dome, he fell amongst the furstrands atop Biebe's black bearskin hat.

"Why....why..." pronounced Alex, picking the matheater up and letting the fellow dangle between his thumb and forefinger, "who knew pygmy matheaters were THIS pygmy!" Indeed, the matheater chieftain was a mere two inches in height.

"Let me see!" Lucilla said, elbowing her way past BertiVet. "OOOooOoooo! Can I have him?"

Terry, who had suffered much of late, shook his head at the hostess. "No," he said gravely, "you will have to search elsewhere for...ingredients." The K&R expert, with his many years of world-wide rescue experience, spoke all the known languages and four of the unknown, one of which was the e-less pygmy matheater dialect, a strange bastardization of the tongue used by the only remaining tribe of native Brooklyn sewing machine repairmen.

Holding the chieftain on the palm of his right hand, Terry engaged in animated conversation with the tiny person who explained in graphic detail his tribes' need for pi.

Once convinced of the stringy, hard-to-digest qualities of West Virginians, the chieftain began to wail in his teensy voice.

Jack, grasping Amanda by her elbow, guided her close to Terry. "See," he said kindly, "see how small of a whale it is." Amanda narrowed her eyes, knowing she had heard MUCH bigger whales than THIS!

Just then, Nash, who was tired of being tree-trapped, wailed, "Somebody SAAAAAVE me!" in a very Smallvillian opening song sort of way.

"THERE!" snapped Amanda, turning on Jack. "THAT was a really BIG whale!"

"Amanda," explained Jack with as much patience as he could muster, "that is Nash...NOT a whale! HOW, I ask you, HOW would you expect a whale to be 97 feet up in the canopy of a Ugandan tree?"

Wanda, ever helpful, said, "It would be the wandering Etruscans again, Jack. Some of them, finding the Egyptian caves to be too desolate to deposit their beloved whale mummies, were known to have traveled by caravan far to the south and...." but her sentence was cut short by Jack's glare.

By now, Diz had scooted up the tree and brought Nash down. Lucilla reached into her backpack and produced the one remaining Fuegan raspberry, placing it on Terry's palm beside the chieftain. It would be enough to feed his tribe for several months.

While the bulk of the cast...and even the less bulky cast members....had been occupied with Nash's descent, Maximus had wandered alone some yards back into the jungle. (The epiwriter had, obviously, been ready to quickly wrap up the whole matheater thingie and get on with a more "General" storyline!) His brow creased as he looked down at his palms. He ran his thumbpads back and forth across his fingertips, studying the tiny blue sparkles of electricity that tingled them so. Behind him, a twig cracked under someone's step. Quickly he tucked his hands under his rust-colored cape, and, turning, saw Joimus approaching, a look of concern on her face.

"Maximus," she said softly, coming up beside the General of the Armies of the North and laying her hand on his shoulder, "is everything all right?"

He managed a small smile, though his lips felt strangely tingly, too. "All is well," he said, his left eyelid twitching violently.

Joimus studied the beloved countenance. "I fear," she whispered, "all is NOT well.

"The General's eyes narrowed, his right hand found the hilt of his short sword under his cape, his synapses snapped with blue bolts and he shouted hoarsely, "I SAID all was WELL!!!" He turned on his heel and ran into the jungle, leaving Joimus standing there in her gossamer Fuegan gown, mouth quite agape.

Juditha, her Maxoseismographometer having gone off the charts, ran up to her,

"Joimus! What has happened to the General??"

Joimus, eyes still wide with astonishment, just stared at Juditha blankly for a moment. "He...he...reached...for...for...his...sword," she finally gasped, her knees beginning to wobble. "He reached for his sword?"

Juditha repeated with great puzzlement. "What do you mean?"

Joimus grabbed Juditha's arm for support as she replied with words she could not believe she was actually saying. "He looked at...me...and he...reached for his...sword." A large tear welled up in her right eye and dripped artfully down her cheek, exactly as Maximus' tears had always been known to do.

Juditha sucked in a deep breath. "Where is he now?"

Joimus, finger shaking, pointed towards the deepest, darkest part of the jungle. "He went....that way."

"Who went thataway?" inquired Sid, coming up beside the two women.

Joimus turned, eyes blazing. "YOU!" she spat, "You did this to him!"

"Moi?" he replied, arching an eyebrow. "I have not even been near the good General for at least a couple of epis."

Joimus moved like a stalking panther towards the chipman. "You and your blue plasma ball," she accused, "He has not been the same since he squeezed the nanogoo out of your rounditude."

Sid smiled widely, batting his long lashes at her. "Aaieeeee!" she cried, intending to fling herself upon him, possibly removing a seagreen eyeball or two. Sid deftly stepped aside with the great grace known only to the criminally insane, and she crashed into Jack's chest.

The Captain, holding her up by her arms, asked worriedly, "Joimus? What is wrong?"

"It...it's....Maximus," Joimus sobbed, looking up desperately into Jack's face. "The blue electricity...from the plasma ball...it's...it's affecting him somehow." She turned her gaze sadly towards Juditha as she added, "He...he reached for his sword."

Great tragedy had yet once again appeared in the storyline. Ah, me! Terry had already gone over to where the underbrush had been broken down by the passage of the Commander of the Felix Legions. He cautiously touched a leaf. "Ow!" he said, as a tiny spark of blue electricity jolted him.

Bud remarked, "Maximus has been...charged." He had felt a certain invulnerability himself to electricity ever since he found he could pull down large displays of Christmas lights and fling them about porches with no damage to his person. "I'll go after him," he volunteered.

"No," Joimus cried, whipping around, "I'm NOT staying here...not when Maximus is...is...." Oh, what WAS Maximus doing?

Well, let's see. He had covered a great deal of ground already as is so easy to do in epis, and was even now arriving at Victoria Falls, much further to the south. He stood there on the high cliffs, staring at their constant rainbow with seagreen eyes gone all oceanblue. He shook his head violently. Why was he here? He had been...hadn't he...with others...not long ago? He couldn't remember who they were. Looking down at his palms, he watched the blue electricity arcing between his fingertips. What WAS that stuff? He pressed his palms tightly together, trying to make it stop, but it only crackled all the more loudly. Then he held his right hand up close to his face, studying it. A large dragonfly lit on his index finger, turned to a black crisp, and fell at his feet. He narrowed his oceanblue eyes, poking at it with one boot tip.

He had to think! All his brain cells seemed to be misfiring. He couldn't seem to...connect...to anything. He squeezed his eyelids tightly shut, but the blue electricity still played on his inner lids. Unclasping his rust-colored cape, he let it fall heedlessly on the wet rocks beside the brink of the falls.

A large crowd burst out into the clearing, many voices calling out, "Maximus....Maximus...Maximus!" Why did that sound familiar? Why did he see flashes of red poppy petals...tiger claws?

One particular feminine voice cried out, "Maximus.... STOP!"

He turned back to the falls, gathered his muscles, and in one mighty leap, did a swan dive right through the rainbow.

"NooOooOooOoooOooooo!" shrieked Joimus as the General's form disappeared from view in the swirling mists at the base of the giant, thundering waterfall.