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.

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

Joimus' scream pierced the African sky, causing a flock of migrating pelicans untold distress. Jack ripped off everything but his TWP's, the mist from the waterfall soaking him instantly to the skin. The Captain would have dived after Maximus were not Juditha wrapped so tightly about his legs. She looked frantically up his torso, past the coffee mug, to where the wet tendrils of his hair hung across his shoulders. "Don't!" she begged. "I can't lose both of you!"

What a picture Jack made standing there, waterfall mist dribbling down his large chest, mug held almost carelessly as his thankfully still seagreen eyes gazed off into the distance, thinking about his lost friend.  

"Look," said Terry grimly, peering down over the brink. "Somebody's GOT to go after him." And as Terry was the world champion underwater nosebubble blower, he decided it should be him. He grabbed Steve's arm. "You come with me!" he ordered in a voice that brooked no dispute.

As Steve's only underwater experience had been in bathtubs, he was, understandably, a bit reluctant. East volunteered to go. After all, he figured, there might just be a Ugandan horse or two down there in the mist. As Jack remained quite insistent on being a part of the Search and Rescue team, Terry went into full planning mode. "If we leap from where Maximus did, there is a 98.87% chance of character deceasement. I suggest Jack and East be the Downtown team and head for that lower ledge before diving. Uptown Steve and I will make our way as far along that narrow path as we can. Oh, and watch out for guerrillas...er...gorillas."

Ann looked at Terry, her eyes all serious. "Are you sure your...equipment...has recovered enough?"

He smiled, giving it a pat. "It's as good as new."

Joimus picked up the dampened rust-colored cape from the rocks and, wrapping it about herself murmured, "He...reached for...his...sword." Some epi events were just SO hard to get past, alas.

BertiGood, making an attempt to fluff the wet faux fur, comforted, "There, there, Joimus. I'm sure he didn't mean it. He was not Himself."

"That's RIGHT!" piped in Russell. I am the only one hereabouts who is Himself."

Sid just grinned, having been Himself for quite a few earlier epis.

Meanwhile, Maximus had surfaced. Dragging himself ashore, he unbuckled his cuirass and the rest of his 450 pounds of armor, leaving them on the riverbank as he stood, looking at his surroundings. The waterfall thundered not far away, filling his brain with its roar, adding to his sense of disconnectedness.

A Ugandan junglegoat bounded up some rocks just to his left and he decided to follow it, not caring where it was going just so that it was....away. Several hours later, he stumbled out into a vast plain, a thatched circle of fairly large huts enclosed by a tall fence at its center. Thirsty, he licked his lips, causing blue sparks to fly back and forth along his tongue. He was clothed now only in his boots and rust-colored tunic, a wide leather belt around his waist, his gladius still clutched in one tired hand. Looking at the weapon blankly, he wondered why he had it, what it was for. Something in him drove him to keep it with him. There was....something....vaguely familiar...about the feel of it in his hand.

He staggered forward, his eyes locked on the closed gateway of the distant fence. From within the enclosure he heard the sound of drums and some sort of wooden pipes. He fell once, heavily, into the tall grasses, and lay there for some minutes.

Gathering the last of his strength, he stood, swaying a bit, the gate fading in and out of his vision. He focused, then, more closely upon the tops of the grasses. They had gone to seed, and their ripened seedheads waved in the late afternoon air. Reaching out his left hand, he let his fingers play lightly over them, some lost memory trying to find its way in vain. Blue sparks arced from his fingertips to the seedheads, toasting them so a scent rather like living near a Nabisco factory filled his nostrils.

With one determined step after another, he arrived at the double gates, opening and entering through in a fashion more than a little reminiscent of Aragorn's arrival at Helm's Deep. The drums stopped. As did the pipes. The Lost Tribe of Sheba beheld his arrival, mouths agape, eyes widened in amazement. Maximus stood there on the verge of collapse, arms spread wide to maintain his balance, sword still held shakily in his right hand. The blue lightning snapped and crackled, circling around his head like some sort of Olympian crown. Bolts of it danced up and down his extended arms, across his torso, down his legs. The entire tribe sucked in their collective breath then fell flat on their faces, calling out, "He has COME! He has COME!"

Juditha watched nervously as Jack grasped a small rootling, lowering himself down the crumbling cliffside toward the narrow ledge. Small rocks, clumps of wet dirt, rudely awakened warthogs, cascaded about him. When he was about 10 feet down, he tipped his head, looking back up at her face, his seagreen eyes taking in a last view of her loveliness before the swirling mist blocked her from his view. She could hear the distant calls between the two rescue teams, muffled now by the heavy rainbow colors.
                                  

"Downtown One, this is Uptown Two," Terry shouted. "Have you reached the ledge?" There was no response. "Downtown One...do you copy? Downtown One...come in Downtown One!"

Downtown One and Two, alas had come upon three gorillas in the mist, and, unlike the K&R expert, were not all that well-versed in gorilla warfare. "AAAAAAACKKK!" came East's cry, rising upwards all damp and clogged with pieces of lavender and indigo.

Hando recognized the familiar "Ugg...ugg" sounds of the enamored female silverback. Setting Ando quickly down, he cocked one eyebrow and said, "There's not a mo...."

"Just GO!" Ando snapped, a bit petulant at character severance after all these epis. Hando grinned, did a one-armed handstand at the brink of the falls followed by a graceful back flip over the edge. Those Melbourners! Always the show-offs! But she smiled anyway. A graceful back flip was nearly as good as a sensational stair-descent. And she knew whereof she smiled, her DVD having worn a deep groove at a particular place.

The rest of the cast atop the cliff listened as various sounds reached their ears: avalanches of shale, mudslides, fisticuffs, dislodged wildebeests venting their displeasure, fannings out of mushroom spores, the jingle of chains.

"Who has the chains?" asked Lucilla.

Wanda just shrugged as, being from Mississippi and all, she would never admit to any knowledge of things involving the use of chains.

Joimus had reached the end of her rope. Not that she actually HAD a rope, but had she had one, she would definitely now be at the end of it. Still clutching the rust-colored cape tightly about her person, she turned to Bunny and said, "OK, Bunsworth, get out your sharp carving stone and carve me an escalator. I need to get to the bottom of this....NOW!"

Bunny, who had all along kept her carving stone sharp offlist carving endless items for the greedy Pittsburgher, were the truth to be told...which it most likely was not...grinned. At last! Something larger than a sig again! With great skill and flair, she whisked and whipped her carving stone hither and even a bit yon...and...voila...an extensively long escalator appeared...an escalator the Underground or even the Metro would have envied.

The clifftop cast descended in a stately manner, down through the mist, past the lingerie and the housewares departments, down to the base of the waterfall. They waited. Two of Hando's rear molars ploinked down on a rock.

Surely he would follow soon? Forms began to be visible above them...flashes of tight white pants. Was it Jack? Was it Hando? A cliff-dwelling Ugandan vampire bat thudded beside Amanda. She looked at it dispassionately and shrugged. It was not a whale.

"Uptown One....nooOoOoOooOooo!" Ann cocked her ears at the sound of Terry's voice as East hurtled past, splashing into the river.

"One down, four to go," Lucilla counted.

Joimus' attention, though, had been taken by Maximus' armor lying upon the wet rocks on the far side of the river. When a final mudslide deposited Jack at her feet, she pointed across at it. "Look, Jack... there...on the far side of the river." Jack was always interested in whatever lay on the far side of things, so as soon as he'd scraped off some of the debris he had accumulated on his descent, joined her in the looking across the river where the General had obviously cast off his protective gear.

Juditha ran up, holding out Jack's poofie/puffy shirt, waistcoat, and British Naval Seacaptain's jacket. Suddenly it struck Jack that all the cast was at the bottom of the cliff. He thought quickly back over the horror...nay, the sheer unadulterated TERROR of his descent. "How did...?" he began, but Juditha just nodded towards the English rabbit, holding a newly-dulled carving stone. "Oh!" he said, understanding completely.

Joimus had already crossed the wide river, leaping daintily from crocodile head to crocodile head in that clever way she had taught Roger Moore some years back.

Carefully and with loving fingers, she folded the 450 pounds of her beloved General of the Armies of the North's armor, placing it in her gossamer backpack, pausing only to wipe a stray teardrop from his cuirass. Shouldering the backpack easily, she studied the terrain. Where would a completely out-of-his-gourd Maximus GO? Only by the greatest coincidence, a young junglegoat began its climb up the very path the Commander of the Felix Legions had ascended some hours earlier. There! That is where he MUST have gone!

Meanwhile, back at the village of the Lost Tribe of Sheba, Maximus sparkled and sparked impressively just inside the double gateway. "Wa...wat..water," he gasped, then toppled onto his face in the reddish dirt.

Cautiously and in great awe, the tribe approached him, gazing at the blue electricity bouncing up and down along his backbone. The chief smiled, then turning to face his people announced (this is translated for the two or three of you readers who failed to learn Lost Tribe of Sheba-speak in junior high), "The Great Wa-Wat has come to us at

last!"

When the joyous shouting had calmed somewhat, the elders of the tribe used long poles to roll the General over and onto a carrying pallet. They carried the Great Wa-Wat into the largest of the thatched structures, a replica of Anne Hathaway's cottage, but with no walls, and lay the pallet down before the tribal shaman.

The shaman frowned. HE had NEVER wanted the Great Wa-Wat to actually come! His beady eyes narrowed as he looked down at the glowingly blue Wa-Wat. Just give him a moment...alone...with him. That would be all he needed. Just...one...moment. But, that moment was not yet...not yet.

All the younger members of the tribe had gathered on the front steps of the structure, listening in fascination as the ancient Storyteller related the legend of the coming of the Great Wa-Wat. All their lives they had heard of how someday, when the winter was over...someday, in the hush of the spring...from out of the farthest North would come a great leader...a man above all others, a man with the wind in his fists and whom even the lightning obeyed. Their little eyes grew wide as they beheld the wonder that lay before them...legend become reality. At that very moment, the Great Wa-Wat stirred, opening eyes of the deepest imaginable oceanblue.

"Wa...wat...water," he moaned, blue lights glowing in the cracks of his dry lips.

Everyone bowed, intoning, "Wa-Wat...Wa-Wat."

With great effort, he turned his head towards them, sparks leaping from eyelash tip to eyelash tip, as he tried to focus. He was so thirsty. "Wa...wat...water," he croaked, reaching up to his mouth with one sparkly blue hand.

Everyone bowed again, reaching for their mouths with their hands as he had done, intoning seriously, "Wa-wat....Wa-wat."

His hand fell back limply at his side, his eyes closed as he drifted away on some blue tide with strange voices calling , "Maximus.... Maximus ... Maximus," as though that had some meaning.

At the edge of the plain, the rest of the cast had gathered in the last of the evening light. Following the General had proven not all that hard, what with the trail of crisped black biting flies and scorched grasses he had left in his wake. Joimus absently rubbed a section of faux fur back and forth across her cheek as she studied the distant village. He was there. She knew it. A lioness, beginning her evening hunt, coughed close by...but she paid it no heed. Nothing would distract her attention from what lay on the far side of the plain, not even had thousands of orcs massed between her and the village.

Jack, too, was studying the village through his telescope. He moved its tip back and forth, finally resting his focus on a strangely Hathawayish sort of building from which emanated a glowing blue light. He lowered the telescope slightly, the entire epi being filled with a large shot of one of his seagreen eyes as a look...speaking many things...found its ultimate expression. One side of his mouth curved up in a slight smile at having located the General; the other side curved slightly down, displaying his concern for the well-being of his friend.

Sid, with his titanium alloy eardrums, picked up the distant sound of "Wa-Wat..Wa-Wat." As the sun slid beneath the horizon, he slipped silently away in the darkness, circling around towards the back of the village. Easily and soundlessly, he vaulted over the 10-foot-high fence, then crouched as he ran toward the rear of the glowing structure.

He had to stifle a snort as he saw the tribespeople gathered and bowing before the prone General. He studied Maximus' profile, the blue lights playing up and down his cheekbones. "Squeeze the nanogoo out of ME, will he!" he thought, then noticed the shaman standing to one side, not joining in with the others. Quickly, Sid grabbed him, had him bound and gagged, then stuffed under the back of the platform upon which sat a simple throne.

Thoroughly painted and garbed in leopard skins and feathers, Sid stepped out into the light, walking up to the very edge of the pallet, a sharpened spear held slightly behind his back. He grinned, thinking of past times he had held Maximus captive in various and sundry laboratories, always hoping to turn MaxiGood into MaxiBad. It had been his life's greatest ambition. But...now...perhaps...