Disclaimer: I am merely borrowing the Children of the Red King universe from Jenny Nimmo for amusement purposes with the full intention of giving them back afterward. I am in no way making any profit or gain from using them.

Manfred's Mustache Mayhem is written for and dedicated to my wonderful friend, Prince of Cardboard. Without her, I never would have realized Manfred had a mustache.

Chapter IV

At exactly ten minutes after six, a piercing shriek rang through Bloor's.

At exactly twelve minutes after six, Gabriel Silk was first spotted tearing through the halls.

At exactly seventeen minutes after six, the first hair-theft-and-run took place.

And at exactly thirty-eight minutes after six, Manfred was the victim of yet another hair-theft-an-run.

It all started when Gabriel Silk received a message from his parents.

"Gabriel, Manfred told me to give this to you. He said that it's from your parents," Emma handed him a folded letter.

Gabriel thanked her as she left and read the letter. After reading it, he let out a very high-pitched scream.

Dear Gabriel,

We don't want you to worry, but the gerbils have lost all their fur. A veterinarian came by the other day and said that they have a very serious case of premature balding. We have no idea how this happened, but we're doing our best to keep them warm during the nights.

Love Mum and Dad (and April and Mai and June)

"I bet Mai had something do with this. We never get along," Gabriel thought. But then he saw the postscript at the bottom.

P.S. Mai had nothing to do with it, so don't blame her.

"Well, how it happened isn't that important," Gabriel fretted. "What I need to focus on is how to keep them warm."

He scratched his head and touching his hair gave him a brilliant idea, "That's it! Human hair!"

"But I'll need scissors first. To the Art Room!"

With that, he took off through the hallways. Once he burst into the Art Room and found himself a pair of scissors and a large plastic bag to put the hair in, he sought out to find the first person he could. Luckily for him, Charlie Bone was turning the corner up ahead.

"Charlie is perfect! His hedge of hair will keep my gerbils warm and toasty," he whispered to himself.

"Hey Charlie!" Gabriel called out.

Charlie turned around and hung back to let Gabriel catch up to him.

"What's up?"

But Gabriel didn't answer. Instead, he tackled Charlie to the ground as soon as he got close enough and sheared all his hair off.

"Can't waste any time, I need as much hair as I can get!" Gabriel thought frantically.

He stuffed the hair in the plastic bag and ran off again, leaving a bald and confused Charlie on the floor.

Gabriel managed to take an alarming number of people's hair, but is most notable catch was Manfred Bloor.

Manfred was busy lurking about and minding everyone's business. He was right in the middle of listening in to a conversation that taught him a lot more than he needed to know about nail polish when Gabriel's earsplitting shriek drowned out the two girls' conversation.

"Well that's just great. Now I missed the name of the best place to go for a French manicure," Manfred huffed as he put away the notebook he had been taking notes in and stomped off in the direction of the scream. "I'm going to go give whoever screamed a piece of my mind."

Twenty-eight minutes later, Manfred saw Gabriel running in the other direction.

"Hey, no running! STOP…IN THE NAME OF LOVE!" Manfred sang the last bit but then hastily covered up is bout of oldies song nostalgia. "Err, I mean…JUST STOP RUNNING AND PRETEND YOU DIDN'T HEAR THAT!"

Gabriel skidded to a halt in front of him and slowly turned around.

"Finally, people are starting to respect my authority around here," Manfred mumbled.

The next thing he knew, there was a flash of silver and he was left bald, mustache-less, and confused as Gabriel ran off with his hair.

"You'll thank me later for getting rid of your hideous mustache!" Gabriel's voice carried down the hallway.

The Word of the Awesome: So finally, an update. I don't know when the next chapter will come out, since it's a new chapter and not one I just have to edit.

I'm not sure how I'm going to do the next chapter, but here's a spoiler of the general idea.

Chapter Five

In which Asa feels that fake mustaches just won't cut it anymore.

Here's hoping I update in a timely manner. But I do suffer from PWB (Perpetual Writer's Block) syndrome, so yeah.