But Joimus was NOT smiling! Not at all! She stared in horror at Maximus, who had collapsed onto his back like some giant statue pulled down by the ropes of revolutionaries. Blue streaks of electricity played over his entire body. Sid, looking very rumpled and rather bent, stood beside him, glaring at the General. "It was his OWN fault!" he spat.

Joimus' eyes narrowed as she bent, grasping the hilt of Maximus' sword, then...

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...stalked toward the off-kilter chipman. Sid read his doom in the flashing blue eyes of the Pittsburgher. What WAS it with the Maximusites and their continual "vengeance in this life...." thingie? Did they never do anything USEFUL...like...like...darn socks? She stopped, glaring at him across the General's streakedy form. He half expected her to do the ole left-handed Roman salute Maximus had given Quintus in the arena. It was all that had been implied in that reversed salute, in the accompanying look, that had turned the turncoat to a life of tulip bulb farming.

Sid, however, had little use for tulip bulbs and, so, was thinking somewhat less flowery thoughts as the recipient of her glare. Joimus looked down into the bung grass where Jack's cutlass had caught a sudden beam of light. Again she stooped, grasping its hilt, flipping both the gladius and the cutlass lightly in expert twirlies. Sid narrowed his seagreen eyes. The woman had obviously watched Gladiator and Master and Commander one too many times. Still, well-armed Pittsburghers had been known in the past to be dangerous. One hand flew involuntarily to his throat. She looked, for all the world, like she were considering making Adam's apple pie!

Just what WAS the windchill back in western Pennsylvania that Joimus warmed herself so untowardly at her keyboard?? He was so taken aback by her effrontery that he lost all sense of direction and his rearward step sent him sprawling over Bunny, who had arrived in the clearing, traces of bung grass revealing her sordid cottontail tale.

"Ooff!" ooffed the English rabbit. Joimus' eyes narrowed to mere slits. The Chipster had not only electrified her Commander of the Felix Legions but the oaf had ooffed the Bunny. NO ONE ooffed bunnies in HER epis!

Her blades swished, leaving little contrails of sliced Ugandan air molecules in their wakes. "Wow!" Sid thought, even he the slightest bit impressed, never having seen anyone flamenco with SWORDS before. Only one thing and one thing alone saved him from the scrap heap at that moment...and that was Joimus' dearly-held, always-kept code of Maximussian honor wherein one NEVER stepped over the prostrate body of a fallen Commander of the Armies of the North. And there he lay on the bung grass...fallen indeed...right between her and Sid.

Chipman grinned. How wise he had been to read the Gladiatorial Guidance Handbook. It was the old, "Know thy enemy" thing at work. He was foolishly arrogant enough to let his knowledge show on his perfectly-formed face. With one practiced motion (just what DID those trapped in Pittsburgh in winter DO for fun?) she flipped the gladius up, catching it nimbly by its lower blade edge and holding it like a giant dart, her eyes once again locked on his Adam's apple. Sid gulped, his Adam's apple rising and plopping.

One corner of Jo's mouth lifted in a deadly grin as she recalled her many years of darting mosquitoes at 600 yards...in the fog. It was the grin that did it.

"Ok...OK!" he muttered, unbuttoning his white shirt to reveal a small compartment. He pressed his lower left incisor, causing the little door to flip open. Sid was a man...well, not REALLY a MAN...of many hidden talents.

Inside, Jo could see circuits, wires, tubes of nanogoo. "Is that your motherboard?" she asked, never...unlike Bunny...having seen...well...I digress.

Sid laughed harshly. "I never had a mother." Joimus' eyes renarrowed. It was the old evil emperor as dysfunctional child ploy again. Next he would probably offer to hug her!

"What," she continued, "is the large blue button marked 'Emergency Use Only' for?"

Sid was silent, thinking it was no wonder that Pittsburghers so seldom managed to escape their city before the glaciers enveloped it. "Well...DUH!" he snapped in a way Joimus found totally disagreeable.

She gathered herself, her intensity level going off the charts as her synapses exploded with paragraph 3, page 47 of the Handbook. Sid, knowing so well as he did that that was where the instructions for gladius grabbing and point insertion into gullets during attempts to execute one in snowy forests was found, shrieked and pushed the blue button. Instantly the blue bolts of electricity that had been playing up and down the General's prostrate person leapt into the air, crackling and hissing into Sid's ear canals.

His form began to uncrumple and fill out again from where the General's strong fingers had squeezed the nanogoo out of the plasma ball. Bunny, of course, was pleased...for various reasons. Joimus, heedless of Sid's plumping, flung herself to her knees in the bung grass next to Maximus. Too bad, in her excitement, she completely forgot she had Jack's cutlass still clutched in her left hand.

The sharpened cutlass edge swooshed towards the General's right earlobe. "I'll take that," came a deep, rumbly voice behind her as Jack's hand grabbed the hilt of his weapon of choice.

"Wh...what?" mumurmed Joimus a bit dazedly, still not having realized how close she had come to ear amputation."

"Tsk...tsk," teased Stephen, "and without even a bucket of sand nearby."

She tipped her head up and back, looking at the revived Captain and the relieved surgeon. "Oh, JACK!" she said, delighted to see him vertical at last. He actually looked none the worse for wear and once Juditha had finished removing the remnants of the confetti from about his lips in that clever way of hers, would be his old self entirely. Joimus' eyes clouded over, though, as she turned her head back down towards Maximus.

He lay there all white and pale in the bung grasses, without even a little mound of poppy-petaled arena sand to use for a pillow as was his habit when prone after battle. Her eyes darted around the clearing, attempting to locate BertiVet's current positioning in the epi. She hoped for once that, just once...only this once...really....that she could get in a wee...just a teensy...itsy bitsy...little, totally innocent and not past PG at ALL...in the least...no, no, no.... She shrugged. What the heck! And, one hand on either side of the General of the Armies of the North's quiet face, leaned slowly down and kissed him...softly....and gently...and, well, rather long...totally ignoring BertiVet's loud throat clearing noises.

It was not more than a moment before she felt movement and warmth in his lips...then the lightest brush of long eyelashes, opening against her cheek, revealing seagreen eyes looking up at her. She smiled, lips still hovering over his. It was rare these days that Sunnie had time to read an epi. She could probably get away with this scott free. If no one blabbed. Especially not the former Welshwoman...who SHOULD know better...but often didn't.

"Well," remarked BertiVet, "it seems Joimus has left off the overt acts of violence in this epi and proceeded on to...other matters."

"Yes," agreed Cyd. "This is rare, indeed. Why, everyone is actually conscious at the moment."

"And no one is bleeding," added BertiVet.

"Or falling," piped in BugPugMomDog.

"Or being dragged down by seaweed," hollered Ando from behind the glompfer bush she and Hando were causing to rustle in a rather suspicious manner.

Joimus ignored them all. Well...until Nash's loud wail reverberated once again through the jungle canopy. Stephen's head snapped up and as the cry diminished, he clapped his hand fondly on Jack's shoulder. "I think..." he said soberly, that Charles is needed more than I."

"Yes, my friend, I fear I have kept you too long," Jack replied. And before their eyes, Stephen's walking stick vanished, then his straw hat, his shoulder bag, his robe...followed by his legs and arms, etc....until at last, only the doctor's smile lingered briefly in the hot Ugandan air. There was the sound of running feet and the distant call of, "Roomie! I'm coming, Roomie!"

Jack sighed, wondering when he would see the cellist again. Juditha leaned her cheek against the Captain's shoulder, remarking, "That was quite a wail."

"NOOooOOoOoOoOoOOooooooooo!" shrieked Amanda, "I won't go back! They can't MAKE me!"

Maximus sat slowly up, blinking his eyes a few times, managed a bit of a grin, and said, "Jack, perhaps we should dress up as whalers and put poor Amanda out of her misery."

"Put me...out of...my...misery?" Amanda breathed, backing toward the glompfer bush.

Jack laughed. "He means 'save you from the whales', Amanda."

"OH!" she said, still a bit unsure, what with all the blades lying hither and yon in the bung grass. "H..h..how would you do...that?"

Jack grabbed Maximus' elbow, helping him to his feet as he suggested, "We could seek out the source of the wails...er... whales, and eliminate its cause."

Amanda grinned slightly. That sounded like a fine idea to her.

BertiVet walked over to the glompfer bush and kicked it. "Come on, Ando, we're movin' out!"

Ando's face, beet red, poked itself over the top of the glompfer, "I am NOT one of your cow collectibles, BertiVet!" Berti smiled.

Just then Cort walked up, followed by a little gaggle of Peeps, Sue the Vile flying point. "Did I hear cowpoke-speak?" he asked.

"It was only Berti," grumbled Ando, stepping out from behind the glompfer, attempting to straighten her hair and wipe off some of her smeared lipstick.

"Where is he?" asked Sue.

Ando batted her lashes coyly, "He who?"

Meanwhile, Terry and Bud were nearing the base of the 97 foot tall tree with Nash crouched somewhere in its high canopy. The mathematician was growing hoarse from his many whales...er...wails. The pygmy matheaters were mere yards beneath him now. He had been tossing pushpins down at them to no avail. He looked at the 3 remaining pushpins lying on his palm...one red and two blue. He curled his fingers tightly about them, planning to toss two but save the last for himself. They would NOT take him alive!

Taking him alive, however, was not in their plans. No...the matheaters had thoughts of pi. And we're not talkin' that circle ratio circumference diameter thingie...no, no. In the alphabet of the matheater folk, there simply was no letter "e". Which, of course, made it very hard when one of them needed to shriek "eeeeeek!' and all that came out was "k". Many, alas, had perished for that very reason.

Nash tossed one of the blue pushpins. It found its mark between the eyes of the lead matheather, giving him the strange...yet oddly familiar...appearance of possessing a third eye. He aimed the red one, but his hand was shaking so that it zipped harmlessly past the ascending diners. There in his palm lay the last of the pushpins. He was glad it was blue. He had always rather liked blue things. How ironic that it had come to this. Not even Parcher could have gotten him in such a situation...alone in a jungle canopy, a single blue pushpin his only way out. He sighed deeply, pushing the pin about his palm with the forefinger of his other hand. There was nothing left to make a pattern from, now was there? The epi was getting way too...somber. Ack!

"Ahoy, the tree!" boomed a voice loudly from the jungle floor.

"Ahoy?" Bud said, looking at Terry. "AHOY? Do you now think you are the captain?"

Terry grinned. Even characters liked to check out the movies of other characters. 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....

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Directly continued as A MORE "GENERAL" STORYLINE...