"What are we waiting for?" Andy shouted. He was right. There was no reason to stay where they were, so all of them took off in the direction of the far side of the room. Jack, being considerably more experienced in going to the far side of things, was way ahead of them. He rounded the curve and stopped dead in his tracks, unable to believe what he saw.

*******

He had wondered where the throne had gone since it was not in the area directly below where it had disappeared. Now, here it was...and in a MUCH more...um...unusual... setting. The wall behind the throne was made of some strange, translucent material that gave the effect of summer sky. The floor was covered in fine-grained white sand, with a large central mound upon which sat the wooden throne. Jack could have sworn he heard the sound of the sea all around, a thing he did not easily mistake!

Maximus ran up beside him, his mouth open to say something that was left unvocalized as he, too, stopped still and stared in wonder at the scene before him. Seagulls were everywhere, many of them bandaged. Every seagull eye was glued to the throne...and its occupant. "Nash!" Maximus gasped.

Indeed, the mathematician WAS seated there between the curving, carved seagull wings. His arms were stretched out, fingers curled around the outer edges of the wooden wings. His head was tipped slightly forward, his eyes closed and he appeared to be deep in concentration. Maximus cast a quick look at Jack. "Is he all right?" he asked quietly.

"I have no idea," Jack replied.

By now, the rest of the cast had grouped themselves loosely behind the General and the Captain. "What's going on?" asked Anna, unable to see past the bulkier forms of the males.

"BULKY? I'm not bulky," protested Johnny. "Why did she type BULKY???"

"Shhhhh!" Joimus shushed.

Berti prodded Wanda with an elbow. "She's doing a lot of 'shushing' lately, isn't she?"

Johnny refused to be shushed. "I'm NOT Bulky! Jack may be bulky, but I'M not bulky!!! Why did she have to go and write THAT?"

The seagulls were stirring, some beginning to turn their eyes toward the group. Joimus knew she had to shut the kid up so she made little freight train noises halfway down in her throat. She hated to have to resort to such drastic measures, but sometimes it was the only way to keep the younger characters in line.

"But what's going ON?" Anna demanded, a bit more loudly than before.

"I think it's Nash," offered Andy.

"Nash?" asked Steve. "Didn't he fall through the floor?"

"Yeah," Colin supplied, "but somebody said he was up there on the throne."

"On the THRONE?" gasped Amanda. "Have we wandered into the men's room?" Quickly she snapped her eyes shut.

Franki was sizing up Nash. She frankily did not like what she saw. "He seems to be in some sort of state or something," Wanda commented.

"We're in Toronto, WW," BertiWise replied. "He's in a province, not a state."

Wanda might have swatted her one, but decided Southerners needed to stick together. What with all the sweat, that was usually easily done, especially when seated on vinyl couches.

"Sid," Maximus muttered. "The Chipman has done something to Nash."

"Yes," agreed Jack, "but what?" The seagulls had settled back into their constant gaze upon the enthroned mathematician.

"What are they waiting for?" Wanda wondered, not being all that familiar with the habits of fixated fowl.

A loud humming sound bore through the room, then a wide beam of blue light shone down from the ceiling, making a circle on the floor several feet in front of the throne. The seagulls made little approving clucking noises and slightly twitched their wings, forming tight, concentric rings about the light. Two vague shapes started to form in the center of the blue circle.

"Scott must've gotten the transporter fixed," commented Ando.

Indeed, molecules did strangely seem to be regrouping in some fashion. Second by second the forms grew clearer, until, at last, despite the presence of Berti, Phyllis gasped and sank to her knees. Tears ran unheeded down her cheeks as she reached one hand toward the distant light. One of the forms was Himself! The other was Braddock. They seemed completely unaware of the gathered seabirds or their fellow cast members as they turned slowly, their feet a good yard off the floor. Phyllis realized it first. They weren't really there. They were hologramistic projections of their real selves. The fingers of her extended hand curled back, one by one, as she brought them to her mouth, biting down hard on a knuckle.

Sid's disembodied laughter bounced off the walls. "There they are!" he called out. "Come and get 'em!"

Maximus started forward, but when Joimus saw the little charges of blue electricity beginning to streak the beam of light, the General's all-too-recent loss of his identity, the way his hand had reached for his sword, his swan dive off Victoria Falls...all of it...were just too fresh, too painful in her still bruised memory. "Maximus...stoooooop!" she shrieked, flinging herself across the space between them. Launched like a giant stone by the catapult of her love, she crashed into his back, the two of them toppling to the sandy floor. The breath was knocked out of him for a moment and he lay there, Joimus sitting up beside him, then leaning over. He blinked his eyes several times as he recovered, and she fixed them with the bayonet of her gaze. "Maximus," she said, "remember your gourd. I cannot bear your loss of it a second time."

The tone of the hum changed just then, and they turned to look at the light. The molecular structure of Himself and Jim seemed to be coming undone again. Sid cackled. "Perhaps if I drop Himself in the molten bowels of Mount Doom, I shall be free from the curse of his endless creation of new characters."

"He doesn't like the other characters?" Jewelie asked, puzzled and disturbed.

"No," Eryn explained. "He wants to be the ONLY character."

"Why?" she asked reasonably.

Sid had heard. Of course. "Because they are all simpletons, that's why! They bumble around with their inferior bodies and their inferior brains and are a blight upon the earth! Their existence...offends... me! And HIM!" he shouted, meaning Himself. "He just will not stop! A cop here, a captain there! Every time I turn around there is some new blot upon the purity of my life. Next I suspect he will be wearing tights and leaping over buildings. It MUST stop!"

"Why did you take Jim, too?" Jewelie wanted to know.

"Because," Sid snarled, "he is the newest character and is still in the formative stages. If I can stop Jim Braddock from ever getting to the silver screen...."

"No!" Julie interrupted. "I won't let you!"

"No?" Sid mocked. "You won't LET me?" Great howls of laughter rang so loudly most of the cast covered their ears. "Oh, my dear," he finally continued, "you are SO amusing!"

With that, the blue light disappeared back into the ceiling and Himself and Jim were gone. The seagulls also were gone. Only the throne was left, Nash seated upon it as before.

Franki rushed up to it, sinking to her knees before it so she could look up into John's down-turned face.

"That's two sinkings so far in this epi," Berti counted. "And I've not forgotten the one falling to the floor, either."

"You could," Wanda suggested hopefully. "Truly you could."

"No," Berti replied solemnly. "She gets away with far, far too much."

Speaking of the fallen to the floor personage, he remained still in said position...mostly because Joimus was leaning both elbows on his cuirass as she busily studied the growth patterns of his moustache. Little smiles played about the corners of the General's lips, causing the moustache hairs to twitch slightly in a way that held the Pittsburgher spellbound. "Can we forget the storyline," she sighed, "and just go back to the tent?"

"Later," he replied, his voice deep with promise.

She took a long, slow breath and closed her eyes, seriously reconsidering the ratio of angst to romance in epilife.

"JOHN!" Franki called sharply, shaking Nash's knee.

Eyes still closed, he began to sing softly, "Inch worm, inch worm, measuring the marigolds...seems to me you'd stop and see...how beautiful they are."

"Hans Christian Andersen??" Berti exclaimed! "Ack!"

Slowly the long lashes fluttered open and he smiled at Franki. Her brow creased in worry as she met his kindly gaze. "Though you're no bigger than my thumb...than my thumb," he entuned, letting go of the wooden throne wings and making his thumbs do a little dancing motion in front of her face, "Thumbellina, don't be glum...."

"Oh, NOOOOOoooOOoOooo!" cried Ando, suddenly grasping Sid's truly unspeakable plot. "He's going to get rid of the characters one by one by turning them into... into...."

"Danes?" Amanda asked. "He's going to turn all the characters into Danes?"

But the former Welshwoman was too horrified to offer correction. Her eyes had gone all roundish like wheels of cheese and her mouth hung wide like the Chunnel entrance. Had she still retained vocal abilities at that moment, she would have screamed, "HANDO!" but, alas, she did not, could not, and so merely stood there, mute as a mushroom, and watched as the young Melbourner....