Once Gobo and Red finally managed to dig themselves out of the pile of Doozer sticks, Red ran down the tunnel as fast as she could. Gobo followed her.
"They're too far ahead of us, Red!" he called out. "We'll never catch them now!"
"Says you!" Red shouted. "I'm not giving up!"
Gobo sighed. He knew once Red got started, there was no stopping her. They ran down the tunnel together, until they came to a fork in the road, where the path split in three different directions.
"Oh no!" Gobo shouted. "I forgot that this tunnel led to Fraggle Fork! Which way did they go?"
"I don't know," Red said. "Oh rock beetles! We'll never find them this way!"
"And we don't even know who they are, either."
"Wait a minute, Gobo! Look at this!"
Red walked over to the side of the paths, and picked up a brown bottle, with an old fashioned label on it.
"It says Dr. Felonious Fraggle's All Purpose Cure All Moss Oil," she said.
"Moss oil?" Gobo asked, making a face. "Whoever heard of moss oil? And who's Dr. Felonious Fraggle?"
"Someone to run away from very fast, if he's got a name like Felonious! I think that's one of the Fraggles we're looking for!"
"You think this bottle fell out of their wagon?"
"I sure do! Look at this path, it's easy to hit a bump in it and cause you to lose something if you drive over it too fast. I lost a wheel that way once during the Fraggle Five Hundred."
"Yeah, but it doesn't tell us which way they went. It was on the side of the path. If that wagon of theirs hit a bump in the road, it could have fallen out, and bounced against the ground, or rolled to where you found it."
"I know, but it gives us a clue of who those Fraggles might be! Maybe someone at Fraggle Rock's heard of this Dr. Felonious Fraggle, and maybe that'll give us a clue of where to find him, and his flunky!"
"It's worth a shot. To the Fraggle Horn!"
Gobo and Red raced to the Great Hall and the Fraggle Horn as fast as their legs would carry them. Red handed the bottle to Gobo, took a deep breath, and blew into the Fraggle Horn as loud as she possibly could. She did this five times, to make sure that every Fraggle in the Rock arrived at the Great Hall. After her sixth blow, the World's Oldest Fraggle banged on the horn with his cane as hard as he could, causing it, and Red, to vibrate.
"That's enough, you young whippersnapper!" he shouted. "We got the message!"
"Sorry," Red said, a little sheepishly. "I just wanted to make sure every Fraggle came. It's an emergency!"
"Aaaaahhhhhh!" Boober yelled. Then he began running around in circles. "Oh no! This is horrible! This is terrible! We're all doomed! AAAAAHHHHHHH!"
"Boober, I haven't told you what the emergency is yet!" Red shouted.
"Who cares what it is?!" Boober shouted. "I'm not taking any chances!"
"What is the emergency, Red?" Mokey asked.
"Listen up, every Fraggle!" Red shouted. "There were two strange Fraggles hanging out at Gemstone Grotto and Yellow Cavern. Both times I saw them, they were talking to Wembley, and trying to get him to go with them. Gobo and I saw them when we were on our way to Splashdown Summit, and they had Wembley with them!"
"What?!" Mokey shouted.
"You heard right, everybody!" Red shouted. "They kidnapped Wembley!"
"Oh no!" Boober gasped. "I knew strangers in the Rock would be bad news! I knew it, I knew it, I knew it!"
"Are you sure, Red?" Mokey asked.
"Positive!" Red shouted. "Gobo saw them, too, didn't you, Gobo?"
"Yeah," Gobo said, nodding. "They zoomed right past us in a wagon, and Wembley leaned out, called to me and Red, and yelled for help, and this Fraggle covered Wembley's mouth with his hand, and yanked him back into the wagon. If that isn't kidnapping, I don't know what is."
Several Fraggles began talking at once by this point. They couldn't believe what they were hearing. The World's Oldest Fraggle began banging his cane against the Fraggle Horn again to restore order.
"Hush up, you Fraggles!" he yelled. "This is no time to be jabbering and jawing all at once!"
"Where are they now?" Mokey asked.
"Unfortunately, we don't know," Gobo said. "We lost them. They drove their wagon right through a Doozer bridge, and Red and I tripped over what was left of it. We sailed right into huge Doozer tower and got buried in the mess. By the time we dug ourselves out, they were long gone. We followed them up to Fraggle Fork, where the path splits into three different tunnels, and we couldn't figure out which one they might have gone into."
"But we found a clue to who they might be," Red said, holding up the bottle. "When we got to Fraggle Fork, I found this bottle on the side of the road."
"Looks familiar," the World's Oldest Fraggle said, adjusting his glasses in order to see the bottle better. "Let me see that."
Red handed the bottle over to the World's Oldest Fraggle, and he inspected it. Then he let out an ear-shattering shriek, and threw it away as hard as he could. Henchy caught it, and looked at the label.
"Dr. Felonious Fraggle's All Purpose Cure All Moss Oil," he read. Several Fraggles gasped loudly at this.
"Oh no!" Aunt Granny Fraggle shouted. "Not Dr. Felonious Fraggle's All Purpose Cure All Moss Oil!"
"Anything but that!" the Storyteller shouted.
"Head for the hills!" Gobo's uncle, Traveling Matt, yelled. "It's come back to haunt us! Aaaauuuugggghhhh!"
"And if that rock-awful tonic is back," Red's mother, Cerise, said, nervously, "then that means . . . . he's back!"
"Oh we're all doooooomed!" Boober yelled. "If he's back, there's no hope for us!"
"Who, Boober?" Mokey asked.
"How should I know?" Boober asked. "I don't know what they're all talking about, but why take chances?"
"Oh brother," Gobo muttered under his breath.
"Mom, who's he?" Red asked. "Do you mean this Dr. Felonious Fraggle? And what's so bad about this moss oil of his?"
"What's so bad about Dr. Felonious Fraggle's moss oil?!" Matt shouted. "What's so bad about Dr. Felonious Fraggle's moss oil?! I'll tell you what's so bad about Dr. Felonious Fraggle's moss oil! Look what it did to me!"
Matt took off his hat, and then he pulled off his hair. Several younger Fraggles gasped when they saw Matt's bald head.
"Hey, Uncle Matt, I didn't know you wore a toupee," Gobo said, and he began snickering, along with several other Fraggles. The snickering built up to downright laughing.
"I've never been so humiliated in my life," Matt mumbled, as he put his toupee, and his hat, back on. "I think I shall crawl under a rock, and die now."
"So it caused Uncle Matt to lose his hair," Red said, shrugging. "What's so bad about that?"
"It's much worse than that, Red," Cerise said.
"Far worse than you may think!" the Storyteller shouted, shuddering.
"We were all . . . ." the World's Oldest Fraggle said, shuddering a little, ". . . . all . . . . I don't know if I can say it!"
"Go ahead and say it, your geriactricness," Henchy urged. "You'll feel better."
The World's Oldest Fraggle sniveled a little, and looked down at his feet. Then he looked up at the ceiling.
"We were all . . . ." he said. Then he paused to snivel, and then he screamed at the top of his voice, "BALD!"
This caused several Fraggles to began moaning, and crying. Red, Gobo, Mokey, Boober, and several other Fraggles looked at them as if they were crazy.
"So what's wrong with that?" Gobo asked. "Plenty of Fraggles don't have any hair."
"It wasn't just our hair, Gobo," Cerise explained.
"We lost all our hair and fur!" Aunt Granny cried.
"All your hair and fur?!" Gobo asked, incredulously. "Every last Fraggle? Completely bald?!"
"As boulders," Matt said, gravely. "Oh, it was so humiliating!"
"Not one speck of hair or fur on anyone!" Cerise shouted. "Even our balloobiouses had fallen out."
"But . . . but I don't ever remember being bald!" Boober shouted.
"You hadn't been born yet, Boober," Cerise said. "Neither had Red and Gobo, for that matter. Mokey, you had been born, but you were only a week old, and too young to remember."
"Oh gosh . . . ." Mokey said. "You mean, I was bald, too?!"
"Yep," Cerise said, nodding. "Every male, female, and child Fraggle was hairless. Not one of us was able to escape the Great Baldness."
"The Great Baldness?" Red said. "What do you mean?"
"Yeah, I've never heard of that," Gobo said.
"I give the floor to the Storyteller," the World's Oldest Fraggle said. "She can tell you about it better than I can!"
"Oh no, please, your world's oldest-ness!" the Storyteller begged. "Please don't make me tell the story of the Great Baldness! It's too horrible!"
"I know it's horrible, my dear," the World's Oldest Fraggle said, patting the Storyteller's shoulder sympathetically. "But it must be told to the younger generation, so they don't make the same mistakes we did. Especially if those two rotten radishes are back in the Rock!"
"Ohhh . . . . all right," the Storyteller said, resignedly. "One day, a long time ago, two strange Fraggles pedaled a wagon into Fraggle Rock. One was tall, and the other was short. The tall one introduced himself as Dr. Felonious Fraggle, and he introduced the short one as his associate, Fink Fraggle. They came to tell us about what he called Dr. Felonious Fraggle's All Purpose Cure All Moss Oil. He said it would cure every thing from abdominal pain to zoonotic hookworm, and everything in between! Well, we all were talked into trading five hundred radishes for this 'miracle cure' of theirs!"
"Five hundred radishes?!" Mokey shouted. "Wow, that's a lot of radishes!"
"Yeah, Darcy, Wini, and I must've been thumped at least ten times each going into the Gorgs' garden to gather enough radishes to pay those crooks off!" Cerise shouted. Darcy and Wini were Mokey's and Wembley's mothers, respectively. Darcy was the radish gatherer in the Rock before Mokey got the job, and Cerise and Wini often went with her to help her.
"They were under the impression that this moss oil would help heal them after being thumped," Aunt Granny said. "We all believed it!"
Curiously, Red uncorked the bottle, and sniffed it's contents. Immediately, she flinched, groaned, and jammed the stopper back inside.
"Eeeuuuuwwww!" she shouted. "That stuff smells awful!"
"And it tastes even worse!" the World's Oldest Fraggle shouted. "Trust me! But we all drank it, and all our fur and hair fell out within two days."
"Nobody knows what's in it, either," the Storyteller said. "Nobody's been able to figure it out."
"Think you can identify the ingredients, Boober?" Gobo asked, handing the bottle to Boober, since he had the most sensitive nose in the entire Rock. He could figure out what went into any dish without seeing it being made.
"No way!" Boober shouted. "I don't want to risk coming in contact with that stuff and having all my hair and fur fall out! I don't want to be bald!"
"And the World's Oldest Fraggle had a bad reaction to it, as well," the Storyteller said. "Not only did he go bald, but he turned pink, and broke out into red, yellow, and blue polka-dots!"
"I looked like a piece of tutti-frutti candy for a month," the World's Oldest Fraggle lamented. "And it took an entire year before all our fur grew back! I gotta tell you, that was one long, cold winter!"
"Yeah, I'll bet!" Gobo shouted.
"Felonious and Fink were also gamblers," the Storyteller went on. "They played games with us where we would bet radishes, and they always won. They also sold phony good luck charms that didn't work."
"They also sold me a plot of land that was nothing but a swampy mess," Matt said.
"It took him two weeks before he discovered the land was worthless," the World's Oldest Fraggle said. "They bilked us out of so many radishes, I had no choice but to banish them from Fraggle Rock forever!"
"Apparently, they're back," Boober said.
"Not necessarily," Mokey said. "I mean, whoever those two Fraggles were, they may not be Felonious and Fink. Maybe they bought a bottle of this stuff from them. It could be two different Fraggles altogether."
"Wait right here," the Storyteller said. "I'll be right back."
The Storyteller ran out of the Great Hall and to her cave for a few minutes. She returned with a piece of paper, and handed it to Red.
"Tell me, Red," she said, "were these the two Fraggles you've been seeing?"
Red looked at the piece of paper. On it was a pencil sketch of two Fraggles. One was tall, wearing a fedora, long-sleeved shirt, and vest, and he had a mustache. The other was short, wore a turtleneck sweater, and a bowler.
"Yeah, that's them all right!" Red shouted. "I'd recognize that mustache anywhere!"
"Then Felonious and Fink are back," the Storyteller said.
"Oh no!" Boober shouted. "And now they've got poor little Wembley in their clutches! He's too young to go bald!"
"Are they dangerous?" Mokey asked. "You don't think they'd hurt Wembley, do you?"
"It's hard to say right now," the World's Oldest Fraggle said. "Any Fraggle who would cheat an entire rock full of Fraggles out of five hundred plus radishes is capable of anything!"
"Then we'd better act fast!" Gobo shouted. "Everybody go to Fraggle Fork, get into groups, go down the three tunnels, and start looking for Wembley! Mokey, Boober, and Red, you stay here with me. We're going to make posters!"
"Posters?" Mokey asked.
"Gobo, this is no time to draw pictures!" Boober shouted.
"Yes it is!" Gobo shouted. "Once, when I was getting one of Uncle Matt's postcards, I saw the Silly Creature that lives in Outer Space watching a box that had other Silly Creatures in it. There was a wall in the box, with a poster of another Silly Creature on it. They called it a Wanted Poster, and it said 'Wanted Black Bart,' and it had a list of what he was wanted for."
"What was he wanted for?" Mokey asked.
"Cattle rustling, bank robbery, and holding up stage coaches," Gobo said. "Though I don't have any idea what any of that means. Anyway, lots of other Silly Creatures saw the poster and told a Silly Creature called the Sheriff that they saw this Black Bart on the poster, and told the Sheriff where to find him!"
"So if we make Wanted Posters of Felonious and Fink, and put them in all of the tunnels and caves here," Red said, "someone might see them and tell us where they are, and where they might have taken Wembley!"
"Right," Gobo said. "And we'll add Wembley's picture to the posters as well, just in case he manages to escape!"
"Great idea, Gobo!" Mokey shouted. "Let's go!"
And with that, the Fraggle Five immediately ran to Red and Mokey's cave to get started on their wanted posters. They had a production line going. Since Mokey was the best artist, she drew the pictures, using the Storyteller's picture as a reference. Red colored them in, since she knew exactly what color Felonious and Fink were. Gobo wrote the text on the posters, and Boober collected them when they were finished.
"Wanted," Gobo said as he finished the first poster. "Felonious and Fink Fraggle, for kidnapping Wembley Fraggle. Last seen near Fraggle Fork. Please come to Fraggle Rock and speak to any Fraggle you see if you have any information on the location of these three Fraggles."
"We've got to make as many of these as we can!" Red shouted, furiously coloring in the next poster. "And as fast as we can!"
"It's going to take us awhile, though," Mokey said. "No matter how fast we go."
"I don't care how long it takes," Gobo said. "Even if it takes us all night to make them! These posters just might help us find Wembley. I don't even care if we find Felonious and Fink! The most important thing now is finding Wembley!"
"And bringing him home safe and sound," Mokey agreed.
"This is all my fault!" Red shouted. "I shouldn't have left him alone!"
"No, Red, it's my fault," Gobo sighed. "I should've listened to you when you told me you had a bad feeling about those two strange Fraggles. I'm sorry I didn't believe you."
Red didn't say anything. Normally she would have gloated about being right and Gobo being wrong, but now was not the time for gloating. She was too worried about Wembley, and hoping those two con-Fraggles wouldn't hurt him.
