Mathymoose was there and she had her fingers curved around his large hand. He was still asleep. Freeing her fingers, she looked around the bed and grabbing a large pillow, bashed him in the head with it. "Wake up, Mathymoose!" she chirped then bashed him again. Startled, completely disoriented, he leapt to his feet, instinctively drawing his sword. "Waaaaaah!" she wailed, frightened.

The Countess burst in the door, horrified by the sight of the groggy General standing beside the bed, gladius slightly swinging, while Joimus' shrieked and pulled the covers over her head.

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

"Maximus! Sheathe your sword!" she hollered. "Sheathe your sword!"

He staggered, looking for Commodus' body on the carpeting. "Q...Quintus?" he said dazedly, blinking fast, trying to focus.

"Hardly!" she said, coming further into the bedroom and gripping his right wrist. "WHAT do you think you are DOING?" she growled, completely unaffected by the thought that she had just grabbed the swordarm of the deadliest gladiator Rome had ever known. Looking into his face, she could plainly see that he was fighting off the groggy effects of deep sleep. Turning slightly while maintaining her hold on his wrist, she picked up the glass of water from the nightstand and tossed its contents into his face.

He gasped and the sword clanked to the floor. "Pat!" he said, "Why are you here?"

"Why am I HERE?" she repeated almost fiercely. "LOOK at the poor child! Look at what you have done to her!"

Wiping his face with his palm, he turned towards the bed. All he could see was a mound of trembling blankets and his cape. He looked at Pat then down at his sword on the carpet.

"You did more this time, General," she said, "than merely REACH for your sword."

He had no memory of either action, but he paled, imagining what must have just happened. "Oh, Pat!" he murmured, shaking his head, closing his eyes a moment. Then he squatted beside the bed, laying his hand atop the quivering cover mound. "Joimus?" he said softly.

The quivering stopped and the mound changed its shape a bit. "Go 'way!" she said, her voice quite muffled.

"Joimus," he repeated, keeping his hand in place. "I was asleep. I didn't know what I was doing." The mound changed shape a bit more. "I would never hurt my Joimus." His voice cracked a bit when he realized how close he might have actually come to that. He stroked his palm down the curve of the mound. "Come out, Joimus. It's all right. You're safe." A tiny piece of the covers raised just a bit and he could see her eyes.

"You 'cared me!" she accused.

"I know," he said, "and I am very, very sorry."

The covers lifted just a bit more. "You sowwy?"

"Very," he repeated. Her whole head appeared, his fur drape around it like a hood. He smiled.

                                      
She liked his smile and reached out to touch his lower lip. "Mathymoose not 'care me again?" she asked.

"No," he said seriously. "Never, ever again."

"Me come out," she announced, tossing the covers back and sitting up cross-legged on the bed. She reached for the pillow and said proudly, "Joeymoose wake Mathymoose all up!"

He realized then what had happened. "You surely did," he said, shaking his head a bit.

She looked at him seriously. "You gots Fwute Wupes?"

"Fwute Wupes?" he asked, turning to look at Pat.

"Cereal," Pat explained. "She's probably hungry."

"It is a grain product, then?" he asked.

"It is little round multi-colored circles of sugar...with a bit of grain," she grinned.

"I'm not sure I want her eating that," he continued.

Joimus frowned. "Me WANT Fwute Wupes!" she said firmly.

"Let's go to the kitchen, dear, and we'll see what we can find," Pat said.

"Okey dokey," Joimus agreed, sliding off the side of the bed. She walked down the hallway between the Countess and the General, holding hands with both of them.

In the kitchen, Maximus patted the seat of a chair. "Sit here, Joimus," he said, "while Pat makes you some eggs."

Her blue eyes grew round and large, then narrowed considerably as her lower lip pooched way, way out stiffly. Picking up her fork, she threw it on the floor. "No!" she said loudly, "Fwute Wupes!!!"

Maximus picked up the fork and placed it in front of her again. "Eggs," he said.

Picking up the fork, she looked at him, held the fork out and deliberately let it drop to the floor. Maximus picked it up again and was still holding it as Bud and Berti entered the kitchen.

Bud looked at Berti with a grin. "I thought you said she upraised the corn, disappeared in the plasma ball, and smucked the General all to save him from forks." He indicated Maximus with his hand. "But just LOOK at him!"

"This is serious, Bud," Maximus growled. "She wants Fwute Wupes, not eggs."

"Fwute Wupes?" Bud chortled. Berti gasped with the effort not to laugh at the sound of the words coming out of the General's mouth.

Just then Bunny came in the kitchen with a platter of some very strange-looking dish. "It's coconut mushrooms," she announced. "I made them myself early this morning over at Russell's red, white, and blue farmhouse."

Bud frowned quizzically at Berti, who shrugged and said, "I don't know. Must be some English thing rabbits eat."

Bunny held out the platter to Joimus. "Try one," she said brightly, "they're sweet."

Joimus was reaching for one when she said, "Uh, oh!"

"Uh, oh, what?" asked Pat.

Joimus looked at her anxiously. "Potty!"

"Oh, gosh!" Pat grimaced, "I forgot to take her this morning!" Joimus got off the chair and ran for the bathroom off the kitchen.

Sid was in the red barn, waiting for Bunny to come back. He had put the plot device into his back pocket and forgotten about it as he paced back and forth, back and forth, agitated by this whole "inner Fred" thing. He wished Bunny would hurry. He needed to...to...WHAT? He bashed his fist into his other palm. He didn't KNOW what he needed!

He felt this strange desire to fingerpaint and at the same time to slice the paper with knives. He stretched and tensed his fingers, made fists, then stretched them out again. Walking to a post, he punched it, then looked at the slight ooze of blue on his knuckles. He frowned...then laughed...then thought of origami projects. He sighed...wanted to choke the life out of something...then wished he had the materials to make a box kite. He turned in circles and then began to back up, tripping over a coil of rope. Down he went, sitting hard on the edge of a trough. He felt the plot device press into his rearward portions. Standing, he pulled it out of his pocket and looked at it. Had the red button accidentally gotten pressed? He looked warily from side to side. What to do? What to do? He was fairly certain it would have gotten pressed from the contact with the hard wooden edge of the trough.

"Oh, well," he sighed, "...just to be safe...." And he pressed it again. Perhaps no one would ever know.

"Doesn't Joimus seem to be taking a long time in the bathroom?" Maximus asked.

"It's probably number two," Pat said.

"Number two?" Maximus repeated.

"Don't ask," Pat frowned at him.

"Why...," the General began, but his sentence was never to be completed. The bathroom door, hinges still attached, fell flat onto the kitchen floor with an enormous crash. All eyes turned in that direction. There, slightly crouching just inside the bathroom, dressed completely in black with only her hands and a small slit around her eyes revealing flesh, stood Joimus. Her eyes quickly scanned the kitchen, taking in every detail. She stepped lightly forward, then in a continuous series of forward handsprings, crossed the floor, flipped herself over the sink and out the open window.

"What was THAT?" Berti exclaimed.

But Bunny only said one word, "Sid."

"That was NOT Sid!" Berti shouted, but Bunny had already run out the door and was sprinting toward the barn.

Maximus dropped the fork and charged into the bathroom over the fallen door. It was empty. He ran to the window and looked out and all around. Turning back to the kitchen he said, "By the gods! What NOW?"

"Kunoichi," Pat sighed, shaking her head wearily. She then looked at the General. "Female Ninja," she added, "in full shinobi shozoko night mission uniform."

Maximus just stared at her a while before speaking. "I take it this is not good?" he finally said.

Pat looked at him sadly. "She is neither pink nor three, nor does she desire Fwute Wupes." She sighed again. "She's probably a master of the arts of Kappojutsu and Koshijutsu instead."

"And this means...?" he probed.

"Bone breaking and nerve striking."

"But how could this happen while she just went to the potty?" Berti asked reasonably.

As one, both Maximus and Bud said, "Sid."

Bunny arrived in the barn, breathing heavily. "What have you DONE?" she gasped when she saw Sid.

"Has...has something...happened?" he asked, trying to look innocent, but Bunny saw the plot device still in his hand.

"You pressed the BUTTON?" she cried. "WHY would you press the button?"

"It...it was an accident," he protested. "I fell against the trough and then I didn't know if it had gotten pushed or not."

"So you pushed it AGAIN?" she gasped.

"Well," he explained, "last time a single push was, well, not enough." He looked at the wabbit. "What DID happen?"

"She's...she's all black," Bunny said heavily.

Sid, who was, after all, only partially Fred, couldn't resist. "Black like the Spanish soil, or like...." He flew backwards from the impact of Maximus' fist, sprawling into the hay, the plot device sailing through the air, impacting the grind stone and shattering into thousands of tiny pieces.

"NoOOooOooo!" shrieked Bunny. "It's broken! It's broken!"

Maximus stopped in mid-stride, staring at her, horrified by her meaning. Bunny sank to her knees in the straw, blinking back tears. "She's stuck, Maximus. Now there's no way to bring her back."

He staggered backwards a step as though he, himself, had been struck a blow. "Never?" he asked.

"Ever," she sighed. She indicated the shattered plot device. "That was the control...the only control."

"There is no other?"

"None."

He looked at the still-sprawled Sid. "You die...but not yet," he growled then turned and ran out of the barn, followed closely by Bud. Outside the yellow house, Terry was staring up at a dangling rope.

"Did you see her?" Maximus asked anxiously as he stopped beside the K&R agent.

Terry pointed up to the second floor bedroom window where a grappling hook was lodged on the sill. Not wasting time on further words, Maximus sprinted back into the house and took the stairs 4 at a time. Coming to the bedroom door he paused at the sight of her standing on the bed.

"I have two inches on you," she said, her voice low and slightly muffled by the black material covering her mouth. She unsheathed her ninja-to and used its tip to point to his gladius lying on the carpet a yard out from the bed.

He stood perfectly still, licking his lips, his eyes locked on her every movement. How truly countless were the times he had faced someone with a sword. And many were the times he had not even had a sword in his own hand...as now. But never did he think to stand before such a sight as this.

"How careless of you," she said, "to have left your blade...unattended." Her eyes darted past his shoulders to where Pat, Bud, and Terry had gathered just outside the door. Maximus took a single step toward her. "Do NOT!" she ordered, her ninja-to held just slightly more forward than before.

"Joimus," he said, his voice soft and pleading, "set the sword down...please...set it down."

"I think not," she replied and as Bud stepped into the room, she did a backflip out the window.

"NO!" cried Maximus, running toward it, his face a mask of horror. He looked down, expecting to see her lying on the ground below, but she was not there. Turning his head quickly upwards, he saw her black-clad leg just disappearing over the eave of the roof. "How...?" he murmured.

Pat, now also in the room, said, "It's her Tabi boots...and she's probably got ashiko on as well." At Maximus' frown, she explained. "Ninja wear Tabi boots. They have a slit in between the big toe and the second toe for climbing ropes and scaling walls."

"And the ashiko?" he asked.

"Spiked claws attached to the boots."

"My God," Bud sighed. "How will we ever get her down?"

"How do you know all this, Pat?" Terry asked.

"It's in the script," she shrugged.

"You know it's not," he replied, narrowing his seagreen eyes at her.

She shrugged again. "Someone needed to know."

Maximus pushed his way through them, retrieving and sheathing his sword, grabbing his cape, then going rapidly down the stairs and outside, peering up at the roof. She was sitting cross-legged on the chimney top. He smacked his teeth sharply together as he sighed deeply, then stood there, rubbing his hand across his chin.

She looked down at him. "I see you are no longer unarmed," she commented, running her thumbpad down the blade of her ninja-to.

"Please," he said, "will you come down?"

She laughed. "You wish to fight me?"

He shook his head, despair rising in his chest.

She laughed again, remarking, "I doubt that in the history of the world a gladius and a ninja-to have ever crossed blades."

How fervently he wished for that to continue! "Joimus... please!" he repeated, his eyes swimming with tears. She stood, stepping off onto the high peak of the roof, returning her sword to its sheath. For one brief moment hope gleamed in his eyes. "Come," he said, holding up his hand.

"I cannot," she replied, then ran lightly the length of the roof and did a triple flip into the tulip poplar near the porch. He was beside its trunk so quickly he knew she must still be up in its thick canopy of branches, but his eyes could not locate her.

"There!" called Berti, pointing toward the distant edge of the forest. She was already three quarters of the way across the wide field. He took off after her, but a sharp pain in his foot sent him to his knees.

Pat ran up to him. "Never chase a Ninja who has a pocket full of tetsu-bishi," she said, holding up a small piece of metal, made so that however it fell, one sharp point was always up. "Go get Marti," she called to Bud. "The General needs attending."

"MARTI?" Franki said, angrily smacking shut the lid of the garlic bin. "Why did they send for HER?"

"It's an enchanting development," Nash replied, covering her hands with his own and turning her toward him. "I'm not that fond of your General ministrations anyway," he added. "I think it may have been because of her great knowledge of poisons,"

Berti explained. "They fear the tetsu-bishi tips might have been dipped in something."

Marti sat on the lawn, unlacing the General's left boot. She had removed the embedded point carefully with a pair of macaroni tongs and dropped it into a soup bowl for further examination. As she probed the puncture wound on his heel pad, he gritted his teeth.

"It doesn't require...maggots...does it?" he asked hopefully.

"No," she replied, "but just in case there may have been some poison, I'd better treat it like a snake bite." So saying, she lifted his foot to her mouth and gave a quick series of suck, spit, suck, spits, thusly proving to all the world that what she had once said about there being no part of him that was not handsomely made...was, for her, true.

Wanda wandered up. Marti had sent for her, needing to ask a very serious question of the Mississippian. "Amongst your jars of toad juice, Wanda," she inquired, "did there happen to be any from behind the eyeballs of the bufo marinus and, if so, is any of it missing?"

Wanda was truly shocked. "Marti!" she cried. "How could you think I would keep...THAT...with my lovely juices?"

"I'm sorry, Wanda," Marti apologized, "but I had to ask. It's so extremely toxic that had she used it, I might have been forced to take...drastic measures." Maximus paled, not wanting to know what that might have involved. "You are lucky, General," Marti announced. "I don't think she actually poisoned the points."

He smiled wanly. "She wouldn't do that...to me."

Marti decided to be kind and not point out that she had, in fact, scattered several dozen tetsu-bishi in his path.

As Joimus neared the woods, she wondered what time it was. Scooping up a passing farm cat, she looked at its eyes.

"Ah," she said, noting that its pupils were shaped more like seeds than eggs or balls. "It's 10 o'clock." Ninja nature knowledge was much more vast than the general populace was aware of. She had not yet been into this forest and needed some sense of direction. The narrow rings of a tree stump showed her where north lay. She headed west...drawn instinctively toward...home. After only 10 steps, though, she halted.

"No," she thought," I must not leave a trail." Sitting on a log, she took off her ashiko, replacing them with the carved, wooden footprints of a deer that fastened securely to the soles of her Tabi boots. Much better! Now she would only leave the tracks of a deer in a forest filled with hundreds of them.

Maximus limped across the kitchen, attaching his regimental canteen to his belt. "You intend to follow her?" Berti asked, already knowing the answer. He fastened a silent, dark gaze on her a moment, then wordlessly turned and headed toward the front door. She looked at Bud. "We cannot let him go alone, you know."

"I never thought we would," Bud replied, stuffing some matches into his pocket, locating a flashlight, then opening the pantry to look for supplies. Berti went out on the porch. The entire cast, even Sid, had gathered on The Village green.

Maximus was already limping out the gate when Aubrey swung himself up onto the porch railing, holding onto the roof post and leaning out over the lilacs.

He smiled his "not a moment to lose" smile at the assemblage then loudly proclaimed, "This day is called the feast of...of...of Epian. He that outlives this day, and comes safe home will stand a tip-toe when the day is named, and rouse him at the name of Epian. He that shall live this day, and see old age, will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours and say,'Tomorrow is Saint Epian.' Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars and say, 'These wounds I had on Epian's Day.' Old men forget, yet all shall be forgot but he'll remember with advantages what feats he did in that day; then shall our names, familiar in his mouth as household words, Maximus the General, Terry, and Cort, Hando and Biebe, Lachlan and Himself, be in their flowing cups remember'd. This story shall the good man teach his son; and Epi Epian shall ne'er go by, from this day to the ending of the WORLD," he laughed and completely swung 360 degrees around the post, "but we in it shall be remember'd; we few, we happy few, we band of brothers; for he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile, this day shall gentle his condition," he smiled benignly at them, "and gentlemen in England now a-bed shall think themselves accursed they were not here, and hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks that fought with us upon Saint Epian's day!"

He bowed his head and leapt gracefully over the lilacs onto the lawn.

Buggie eyed Biebe. "He's gotten even more long-winded than the ol' 'This ship is our home' speech, hasn't he?"

"Is tracking a single kunoichi really THAT dangerous?" Anna asked with a shiver.

Pat looked at her grimly. "She has us outnumbered one to 47," she said. "We may need reinforcements."

(DIRECTLY CONTINUED AS: JOURNEY INTO JEOPARDY, SID WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY....) (Marti, in putting it up on Enchantments, changed the name here even though it actually is still a part of Journey Into Jeopardy)

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