The arrows are flying. A dozen of them, launched from the bows of 17th-century samurai warriors assembled on a watercolor green field and about to rain down upon the head of one Hiro Nakamura. But they don't. Instead, the squall of pointy death screeches to a cartoonish halt, frozen in space by the time-traveling/time-stopping supernerd with a clench of his bespectacled eyes. It's a surreal image, though for now it exists only in the mind of Masi Oka, the Emmy-nominated star of NBC's Emmy-nominated sensation Heroes, who actually finds himself sneaker-deep in farm grass, trying to bring this comic-booky moment to life. In this scene from the show's second-season premiere (airing Sept. 24), Oka is supposed to execute his character's trademark reality-pausing maneuver — they call it ''the squishy-blinky'' around here — yet he is being thwarted by the most insidious of bad guys: a breeze. See, when time stands still, wind shouldn't be rippling through the grass. The solution is simple — throw down a bluescreen, manufacture some lawn with F/X — but it's slow in coming, as the on-set producers are currently sipping smoothies and joking with Oka's dialogue coach about turning U.S. states into Japanese-sounding words. ''Or-ee-GON!'' ''Wash-ing-TON!''

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