Chapter 4

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It was the dead of a dark and stormy night. Wolves howled in the trees, as they had climbed up, with great difficulty, after a particularly unlucky cat, and were buggered if they could figure out how this "climbing down" thing worked.

While most of Mineral Town slumbered peacefully in their beds, resting comfortably in the knowledge of a hard day's work, something stirred within the little house at the upper edge of the Poultry Farm. Upstairs, within the darkness of the family's sleeping quarters. Upon the upper lip of one young man slumbering as peacefully as any other townsperson. Something dark and sinister, thin and black, casting eerily twisting shadows on the wall as a flash of lightning lit up the sky with the brightness of day. Except, like…not. Later, and stuff.

The source of the vile shadow attempted to let loose with a properly dramatic bellow of laughter as a crack of thunder echoed outside the window, to give voice to the evil glee welling up within the cavity that ought to have held its soul, long since sold for the best cream rinses on the market. However, lacking both a mouth and vocal chords, it failed utterly, and settled in on the young man's upper lip for a long night of pouting.

But soon, its time would come.

Sooooooooooooooooooooon.

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"Good morning, Doctor, how are—"

Here, Elli came to a dead halt, her cheery good morning trailing off into a decidedly impolite gawp at the strange sight before her.

The dark-haired young man in the lab coat was, indeed, seated in his desk, clothes neatly pressed thanks to his little nurse's eagerness to please, in sharp contrast to his hair, slightly mussed in testament to the fact that he was, indeed, very watchful, and tended to catch her out before she could comb it for him.

However, rather than the small, fond smile usually reserved for her enthusiastic greetings on just this sort of morning, when the scent of rain hung in the air, when the sparkling droplets shone on leaves and flowers, when all the world seemed fresh and clean and new and glad to be alive; the doctor wore a very decided frown.

A pout, even, Elli thought bewilderedly, once her eyes managed to move past the curling, pencil-thin black mustache that she was fairly willing to bet hadn't been there yesterday.

She ought to know, after all; she was quite certain that she spent more time closely examining everything about him than anyone else in town. Even the things that didn't involve the use of the peeping hole in the wall between their rooms.

"Um…you have a mustache," she announced lamely.

"Yes, thank-you, Elli, I hadn't noticed," the doctor grumbled, cupping his chin in his hand and leaning despondently on his desk.

"How…how did you manage to grow it out so fast?"

"I don't know," he replied helplessly. "Yesterday, I had no facial hair to speak of, and this morning, I woke up with this…this monstrosity."

"It doesn't look that bad," the befrilled girl perched at the edge of his desk assured him. "It's a new look, but it's kind of nice. Although, you might want to think about investing in some really good mustache wax."

"Not that bad!" he repeated, disbelief fairly dripping from his expression and voice. HE was very decidedly opting against going anywhere near her mention of mustache wax, or exactly how she knew anything about men with mustaches and the upkeep thereof. "Elli, I look like an evil duke who delights in oppressing his servants, or something!"

"Hmm…it does give you a bit of a sinister air," she agreed mischievously, looking shyly away, cheeks growing pink. "I would have said snake oil salesman, myself, but an evil duke is a lot more elegant. I like it!"

"I think you're missing the point," the doctor might have informed her gently, had Rick not chosen just that moment to burst into the room through the gap in the curtains.

"Hi, Doctor," he greeted breathlessly. "I would have waited and made an appointment, but Elli wasn't out there. I think I've got a bit of a…"

Here, he trailed off, expression freezing into blank surprise as his eyes lit on the mustache, on another man's face, that had grown so chillingly familiar to him after several minutes of staring disbelievingly into the bathroom mirror, trying to recall if he had been drunk enough last night to take some sort of experimental hair growth tonic. After all, Karen had been strangely absent from the bar last night, and without trying to impose a drink limit on her before she lost consciousness, he had had nothing to distract him drinking himself into a similar state of unconsciousness, or at least, memory loss.

And so passed a long moment during which much may have happened elsewhere in the world, or even elsewhere in Mineral Town, but which was passed in the back room of the clinic by the sound of two young men staring bewilderedly at each other, learning to both their joy and their dismay that they were not the only one afflicted.

And also, by the sound of one young woman in a poofy blue dress trying very hard not to laugh any more than was strictly decent.

Finally, Rick heaved a long sigh.

"Never mind."

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"WAAAH!" Sakura was, in a show of complete and generally meaningless coincidence, howling at just that moment as her foot caught on a particularly warm, soft, and squishy branch conveniently placed just outside her front door.

"Ow!" Ann yelped in reply as the toe of Sakura's heavy work boot dug into the sensitive, fleshy part of her calf, providing a rather rude awakening that even the decidedly rough, stony, and grassy quality of her makeshift bed hadn't managed to reconcile her to.

"Ann!" Karen called, bolting toward the farmhouse from her post crouched behind the large, sturdy tree next to the fish pond. "Did you find out who…oh, hi, Sakura," she finished, expression melting immediately into a smile so entirely pleasant – and convincingly so – that Ann would later confide to Mary that it was "almost creepy".

"Hey, guys," Sakura greeted beamingly, peeling herself from the ground. "Funny running into you two here!"

"You're getting a late start today," Ann noted, attempting to shoot Karen a subtly meaningful look and completely failing at the subtle aspect thereof.

Having a slightly firmer grasp on exactly what made a good super-spy, Karen, far more subtly, attempted to peek around Sakura and through the front door, still open.

"Yeah, I know," Sakura said sadly. "I'm just so tired! Didn't get to sleep until really late last night."

"Really? Do you think something's wrong?" Karen asked, face and voice the very picture – and…er, sound – of concern. "Maybe you should go ask the doctor if insomnia is normal for young, hard-working farmers."

"Or maybe," Ann added, peering suspiciously at the blonde, "you'd just feel better if the doctor gave you a special check-up, eh? Maybe that's why you didn't get to sleep last night – he was making a special house call or something?"

"No, the doctor wasn't here; he said he had an appointment with his peeping hole, or something. Y'know, Elli said exactly the same thing when I asked her over a few nights ago! Weird, huh?" the little farmer concluded with a laugh, shaking her head and folding her arms.

"Great," Karen huffed. "That's just what I want to hear about first thing in the morning: the doctor's voyeuristic habits with the sweet, innocent young girl sleeping one room over."

"Really? That's kinda strange," Sakura informed her absently, backing away slowly and casting a nervous glance over her shoulder as she recalled the framed photograph lying on her bed, very likely visible from the door.

"Well, then, maybe if the doctor doesn't suit your tastes, you should think about going to Saibara's and seeing if Gray could invent some magical tool of instant sleep, or something," Ann suggested, peering even more suspiciously at Sakura.

"Subtle," Karen noted aside, heaving a long-suffering sigh.

Sakura made a noise of amused disbelief.

"Well, geez, Ann, you can do that with a hammer!"

"Oh, I'd like to," Karen muttered, eyeing Sakura's tool chest longingly through the open door. "By the way, Sakura, have you seen Cliff around? Ann was looking for him."

Ann scratched her head.

"I was?"

"I saw him the other day when I went to pick up my copy of Carter's Toasteriffic Musical Extravaganza," Sakura replied cheerfully. "But when I asked him if he wanted to come listen to it with me, he said he had somewhere else to be. Right now," she added. "And then he just hopped up and ran right out the door! And that was the last time I saw him."

"Well, have you seen Rick lately?" Ann asked, shooting a glare at Karen. "I think Karen was looking for him."

"Which one was Rick?" the farmer asked, scratching her head.

"Chicken guy," Ann replied."

Sakura nodded in perfect understanding.

"Oh, right; him. Sorry, haven't seen him since the last time I bought a chicken. But I've been kinda…well, busy," she finished, blushing brightly and rubbing the back of her head sheepishly.

Karen, who had been hitherto trying to will herself out of this conversation, snapped back to attention.

"Busy with what?" she demanded sharply.

The little blonde pondered this carefully.

"Hmm…clearing my field, tilling, planting, watering, foraging for extra money, taking care of my chickens, taking care of my horse, taking care of my puppy, my monkey, my snake, my bunny, my boyfri—" She stopped abruptly, looking distinctly horrified. She gave a nervous laugh. "Um, forget I said that, okay?"

Karen and Ann exchanged significant looks.

"Sure, Sakura. We'll see you later, alright?" Karen said a little tersely before dragging Ann from the farmyard by the back of her overalls.

Sakura watched them go, shaking her head fondly.

Her new friends were something else, alright.

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"Burnin' the ground, I break from the crowd, I'm on the hunt, I'm after you…" Rick sang softly as he splashed water carefully onto his upper lip and reached for the can of shaving cream waiting at the side of the sink.

He sighed as he lathered the white foam over his mustache.

"What a waste of time. I can't believe I'm stuck up here, in the middle of the day, shaving. Although," he added, his frown deepening, "there's nothing else to do, since Karen never showed up this morning."

With a shrug, he picked up the razor and leaned closer to the mirror, preparing to rid himself of his unwanted new look.

However, as the razor touched his lip, he found it jerked out of his hand by something thin, black, hair, and apparently bearing quite a healthy sense of self-preservation.

Rick stared, bewildered, at the razor, buried an inch and a half deep in the bathroom wall. It was to be several seconds before he could tear himself away from this enough to notice the fact that his mustache had grown by about two feet in the last thirty seconds, and was currently raiding the medicine cabinet.

"Wow…" he finally noted in a stunning display of understatement. "That's not good."

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"Well, that went well," Karen said, glaring accusingly at Ann as the two hurried up the road back into town. "She probably thinks we're both crazy now."

"I don't know," Ann said dubiously, a thought bubble popping up over her head containing a picture of Sakura with her customary beaming, utterly oblivious grin. "It kinda seems like she wouldn't catch a hint if it fell on her."

However, Karen was, by this point, in no condition to listen to logic, or anything that resembled it remotely. Utterly ignoring Ann's comment, she continued to vent.

"And where were Mary, Elli, and Popuri while we were doing all the hard work?"

"Well, you know Mary when it comes to that Library," Ann grinned. "She'd never consider taking a day off, or letting someone else open up for her, or letting someone else touch one of her books. And you know the Doctor when it comes to Elli being late for work. Not that she is very often," the redhead finished, pondering this. "I guess that's the good thing about living at your job."

"What about Popuri?" Karen repeated, slowing to a halt, a dismayed expression washing over her face. "She was with us last night, wasn't she?"

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"Uh…guys?" the pink-haired lass squeaked miserably, clinging tightly to the – hopefully – sturdy tree branch on which she had chanced to fall asleep last night…and thus, wake up upon this morning in a very, very bad mood.

Then, as her gaze caught on something furry, sharp-toothed, and frantically barking on the ground, she groaned in dismay.

"Oh, no..."

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"She probably just got bored and went home," Ann shrugged. "Popuri does that sometimes, you know."

Karen considered this. Hadn't Popuri been the only one, apart from her, with the slightest inkling of why this situation needed to be reversed before it could worsen? Wasn't the poor girl tired of being dismissed as a sweet, harmless airhead simply because she had been born with big, bright eyes, lots of soft, fluffy pink hair, and a propensity for looking almost supernaturally adorable no matter what she was doing? Hadn't she, Karen, been saying for years that Popuri was far smarter than anyone suspected?

Mind made up, Karen turned to Ann.

"Yeah, you're probably right."

"Hey, do you think we should go ask her why she left?" Ann asked as they approached the Poultry Farm.

"Sure," the older girl shrugged, and together they turned in at the lane.

Raising her hand to knock softly and alert Lillia that they were coming in, Karen stopped short at the sound of a crash, followed by several thumps, followed by another crash.

"Lillia?" she called, rapping sharply at the door.

"Come in," a sweet voice tinged with concern called back.

"What the heck is going on up there?" Ann asked, frowning upwards as a long, pained scream echoed through the air.

"I don't know," the pretty pink-haired woman replied with a long-suffering sigh. "I think there's something wrong with Rick. First the mustache, and now this!"

"Mustache?" Ann echoed, staring blankly until Karen caught her arm and dragged her towards the stairs.

"Let's go check on him," she said in a tone that implied far more command than suggestion.

"Yeah, good idea," the redhead agreed, trotting up the stairs after Karen. "When Rick gets like this, he usually ends up hurting him—ACK!"

This rather strangely timed exclamation was due not to Ann's sudden and inexplicable descent into insanity and corresponding desire to shout odd things at odd moments, but instead by the pretty vase of blue glass flying over her head, missing it by millimetres, and into a wall, upon which it exploded in a shower of glass shards.

"…the HECK!" Ann demanded angrily, brushing some glass of her shoulder.

"Rick! What are you doing!" Karen demanded furiously as a bar of soap and several bottles of shampoo sailed majestically out of the open bathroom door.

"Karen?" a distinctly weary and piteous voice called in reply. "Is that you?"

"Of course it's me," she shot back, picking her way through the various objects littering the floor of the family's sleeping area, usually kept immaculate by its obsessively tidy inhabitants, and approaching the door of the bathroom, Ann, shrinking behind her like a nervous little shadow. "Now, why the hell are you…huddling in the corner of the bathtub and wearing that stupid fake mustache, for a start?"

Rick dropped his head to his hands and gave an unearthly groan of despair.

"It's not fake," he informed the girls, his voice muffled by several fingers – eight, to be exact, as well as two thumbs.

Karen snorted.

"Rick, you couldn't grow facial hair if your life depended on it."

"I know!" Rick wailed. "That's why I'm worried! Well, that, and it tried to throw one of the chickens into the river while I was feeding them this morning."

"I suppose you're going to tell us that the mustache made this mess, too," Karen said, eyeing him suspiciously after a quick glance around at the abundant chaos.

"It wasn't me, coppers! The mustache made me do it!" Ann giggled.

Karen wheeled on her.

"Will you shut up!" She turned back to Rick. "Listen, Rick; if this idiotic story you're telling us is true, and your mustache really is possessing you and making you do these things—"

"It isn't!" Rick interjected. "It's not making me do anything, it's doing stuff itself!"

"—then why don't you just shave it off? It's only hair."

"Be a man!" Ann added, nearly dancing with mirth. "Show that scraggly little thing who's boss!"

"Don't make it mad!" Rick yelped, clapping his hands over his face.

"You want a piece?" Ann demanded of Rick's upper lip. "Just come and get it!"

"Seriously, Rick," Karen said, ignoring Ann, who was by now dancing wildly about the bathroom, fists raised in a boxer pose. "Just shave it off!"

"What do you think made it mad enough to do this?" Rick demanded angrily, indicating the chaos with a sweep of his arm. "Geez…first Elli, now you! You women just don't get it!"

Karen sighed heavily, lamenting her own taste in men.

"Listen to yourself, Rick." She reached for the spare straight razor lying near the bathroom sink. "But if you're too cowardly to shave by yourself, just sit still, and I'll do it."

"Karen! No!" Rick shouted, stepping back as she approached.

Time seemed to slow as the diabolical facial hair grow nearly two feet in a matter of seconds, snaking forward with lightning speed to snatch the razor with one side, and lift Karen off the ground by the back of her vest with the other. Then, rather confused, it hesitated a moment before hurling the razor out the window. A pained squawk drifted up from the chicken yard below.

"Not Dilly!" Ann wailed brokenly as a flurry of feathers below caught her eye.

"Uh…Ann?" Rick pressed. "Bigger problems right now?"

"Oh, right! Sorry," she giggled, before springing forward to free Karen from the grip of the mustache.

With its free size, it gave the well-intentioned redhead an effortless swat that sent her tumbling back into a very bewildered (and embarrassed) heap in the bathtub.

Meanwhile, Karen certainly wasn't suffering her ordeal in silence. Phrases such as "Put me down, you freak of nature!", "Curly, waxy spawn of evil!", and "…get the trimming of your life as soon as I get down!" could be heard, growing louder and softer by turn as she whizzed to and fro through the air.

"I am TOTALLY going to tell this story at your wedding," Ann informed them in something best described as a woozy cackle, peeling herself from the tub. "Ow, by the way."

Then, just as all seemed lost, as Karen felt her breakfast making an untimely return, as Rick began to reconcile himself to a career as a superhero reject, as Ann began to feel herself swayed in favour of using puppets to best portray the gripping drama of the situation, a flurry of blonde hair and the shing of a sickle being drawn – somehow – filled the air.

"Unhand this fair maiden, Hairy Spawn of Something Really Bad!" Sakura commanded, posing heroically in all her sunburned, overalled glory.

Perhaps unable to refuse such a vision of loveliness, perhaps simply to get the pot moving again, the mustache complied immediately, much to the relief of Rick, who later averred that he could lift Karen without much trouble, but not using his hair, for crappsake!

Then, snatching up a plunger, it surged forward to attack its foe.

A hairy quarter of an hour followed, but when the dust – and cream rinse – had finally settled, it was upon a victorious Sakura, one arm draped over a heavily protesting Karen and the other over a hysterically laughing Ann.

"Hair today, gone tomorrow," she quipped, the sunlight glinting off her teeth as she grinned a huge, cheesy grin.

"Thanks, Sakura," Rick said, drawing a long breath and pulling at the shorn ends of his mustache.

"No problem, son," Sakura said heartily, unhanding the girls. "But remember: you have to take good care of your facial hair, or it tends to go bad."

"Uh, sure," the sandy-haired young man agreed hesitantly.

Once the three had gone, he shook his head.

"Is it just me, or has life gotten a lot weirder around here since she showed up?"

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"Is it just me," Gray asked approximately four hours later, his forehead wrinkled with more annoyance than wonderment, "or have we been totally shafted for air-time in this story so far?"

The pretty, dark-haired librarian carefully set a stack of books down on the table in front of the boy and patted his shoulder consolingly.

"Don't worry, Gray; I don't think we're really missing much."

"Maybe, but that's not the point! This author practically gives us Elli's life story, and spends the last two chapters on Karen's descent into madness, and what do I get?"

"'Peace, perfect peace'," Mary quoted with a sigh, cupping her chin in her hand.

"I get to drag Grandpa up from the bottom of the mine," Gray continued, in no mood to be placated by logic, "and then I get beat up by the cutest girl in town. And then I disappear for three chapters!"

Mary shrugged helplessly, at a loss.

"Well, maybe you'll get a bigger part later on."

"I doubt it," he pouted.

"Look at it this way, Gray," she said with a slightly mischievous smile. "If we're not in the story much, that means we have free time for…other things. Fun things. Things we couldn't do if everyone was around, making lots of noise."

The thundercloud that had taken up residence in the young man's face seemed to dissipate instantly as her full meaning occurred to him.

"Y-yeah," he agreed with a goofy grin. Then, after a long moment, he continued. "So…like what?"

"Like reading!" Mary chirped brightly, pushing a large, heavy hardcover towards him.

Gray looked ecstatic.

"Yeah! We have more time for books! This is great! Thank-you, Mary!"

He took the large volume lovingly in his hands, and had just begun to flip to the first page when the door of the library swung open.

"Hi!" a little girl with dark hair in two long plaits greeted them sweetly.

"Oh, hi there, May," Mary said, reaching for a lollipop. "Gray and I were just talking about the joys of reading!"

"The joys of reading?" May echoed, accepting the lollipop enthusiastically.

"The joys of reading," Mary confirmed. "Say, May, how'd you like Gray and me to teach you how to read?"

"That's okay," May said with a huge smile. "I already know how to read!" She turned to face an imaginary camera crew. "And knowing is half the battle!"

Together, the three book enthusiasts struck triumphant, and more than slightly cheesy, poses. Then, as a sound caught his attention, Gray frowned.

"What was that?"

"I don't know," Mary replied in a whisper. "It sounded like a group of men, all singing 'G. I. Joe!' in unison."

"I'm scared," May whimpered.

"It's okay," the bespectacled librarian said consolingly, handing her a book. "Reading will make it all go away."

May examined the cover. Stephen King's The Shining: Pop-Up Edition.

"Yaay!"

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End Notes: Wow…what's there to say this time? Other than, Bezo, if you're reading this, the G. I. Joe gag is dedicated to you.