Xerec turned to Simon, looking perplexed. "Then how do we kill her?"

Kari frowned and tried to think of all the vampire lore that she'd read in her life....which wasn't much. "Do you know how? Can you tell us?" She asked Simon.

"Yes, do tell," Cosmi said, wondering more urgently if vampires were at all interested in cats. He'd never gotten into vampire novels. "Stake through the heart, or garlic?"

"I think the garlic is only to keep the vampire away from you," said Dona, who didn't know any more about vampires than Cosmi. She suspected that even if garlic was a vampire repellent, the garlic butter she'd eaten with her spaghetti three days ago was not adequate to protect her.

"I don't suppose Sylvia could... well, if the sunlight here is fake, could she make real sunlight or let it in from somewhere? And we could hide the Simon, who is a real vampire (right?) under a coat or something?"

"That's not that bad of an idea" Matthew said while Shono was fumbling through his weapons trying to find something as primitive as a wooden stake, the closest he found was an energon dagger "Darn this technology" he muttered.

"We had vampires where I'm from. I know how to deal with this," Sylvia said and raised her hands, closing her eyes in concentration.

The grass surrounding the Ditto Towners began to ripple and then grow wildly. They transformed into saplings and then shot into the air as fully fledged trees.

The Faux Desdemona shrieked angrily and shoved the groping tree branches away from her with her telekinesis, but there were too many of the now sharp-tipped tree branches. As she turned to knock away one group of branches, another tree leaned in and shot out its branches at the vampire. She shrieked in pain and then exploded into a cloud of dust as the branches pierced her heart.

Suddenly, but not wholly unexpectedly, everyone was back in the mansion. The dark, wood-paneled walls and floors were comforting after the crazy adventure.

Kari tried to look around, but found that the sudden change from relative light to relative darkness was hard to adjust to. "Are we back? Just like that?" She began to make out familiar, mansion-y shapes.

Xerec blinked, her eyes adjusting to the sudden light change quickly. It was then that she spotted Desdemona. She pointed at the vampiress, coldly angry. "You! How could you follow us back?"

Kari saw her too after a moment and raised her hand in warning. "Wait. Maybe is the real Desdemona. The one that got zapped back before the adventure."

There was a general consensus that this made sense, and then everyone waited for what to do next.

"Let's try another door." Kari suggested, frightened of another similar adventure, but even more frightened that this Mansion would never end--heh heh, I mean, even more frightened that the mansion would never get back to Ditto Town.

"Aye, lets go. I don't want to get stuck in here for all eternity" Shono said with a grin "Its getting somewhat cramped for me" he said, even at his low nine feet tall his head kept smashing the roof.

"Ah, love, it's good to see you not, you know, as dust," Simon said, wrapping his arm around Desdemona's waist and pulling her close. "Though I must say, you made an excellent evil clone. It's such a good look for you. Though really love, you could've told me. We could've been evil together."

Bobby rolled his eyes at the vampire and walked over to another door, trying the handle hesitantly.

P.S."Brooklyn!"

Magically, or diabolically, but certainly quickly, as soon as Bobby touched the handle everyone just disappeared from the mansion and appeared...well, they certainly appeared somewhere.

"I thought that we all had to go through the door before anything happened." Kari said, confused.

"Maybe we have been taking too long." Xerec suggested.

"Hmm." Kari looked around the entire place. Strange.

"So, if we're going to be able to reconstruct the original, we'll have to gather the--daobih! What happened?!?!?" a pale redhead looked up from a short white stone pillar, which had various maps and papers spread out on it. She stared at the travelers.

"Treasa!"

"Coming!" Another woman, about the same height, came around what Kari and the others could now see was one of the many bookcases that lined the room, excepting where they were sitting, which happened to be floorspace half in, half out of the ruddy sunlight of a series of skylights.

Rounding the corner of a bookcase, Treasa looked up, gave a short scream, and dropped the books and papers she was holding. It is slightly disconcerting to find a dozen or so people suddenly staring at you in a library. Both Treasa and the redhead looked at each other, then continued to stare at the new arrivals. One of Treasa's papers floated down and settled on the floor by Sylvia's foot.

An uncomfortable silence settled with it.

With permisison form sweeetlilgurlie

Rapidly Roj traversed the streets to the Mansion a bit late, but work had been more important, his dad said. To his surprise, the front door was gone, leaving a wide opening, and on the threshold was a pile of ashes that appeared to have been kicked around by many feet. He stepped through. The room looked entirely empty, but over in one corner sat a sleepy-looking - uh, vampire?

"Hello?" Roj sort of asked. He looked at his invitation. "Um, where's everyone?"

Suddenly the room vibrated, or did something that Roj was not expecting, he was thrown onto a couch at the side of the room, and everyone from stage 1 appeared in the room. There was some conversation, but Roj was a bit too shaken and numb to hear what was going on. He finally regathered his shaken senses to hear Kari say, "Let's try another door."

Roj read different levels of fright on many of the people's faces. Some sort of machine person was so tall he kept bumping the ceiling. Another vampire who seemed to be the partner of the first one was saying something about being evil to her. The whole thing was just so, unreal.

As Bobby reached out to open the next door, Roj cried out, "Hey! What's goin--" but at that instant the room transformed into a library and his words were cut short.

Desdemona had hurried to Simon's side, ignoring all others, when the Ditto Towners returned to the Mansion. Snuggling nestled in his arms, she began weeping loud and dramatic tears.

In anguished tones, she said," You left me all alone! It was cold and dark (which I didn't mind), but then the nasty evil furry bunny ninjas came. They had shuriken! Made of toothpicks! And they wanted to gnaw on my fingers because they said my fingers look like carrots! My fingers don't look like carrots, do they darling? I hate carrots, nasty pointy orange things!"

Sylvia didn't even bother to stifle her mocking laughter as Desdemona told her tragic tale.

Sylvia began poking around the library, looking at titles with apparent genuine interest.

"You know, we could make things a lot simpler this time," Sylvia commented idly. "All we have to do is stab people until we find the Ditto. I figure the odds are good we find the Ditto before we kill everyone."

"Do you realise that there is only one Ditto, and like twelve of us, I know death may mean nothing to you, Sylvia since as a god you can't die. However the rest of us fail to have the ability to raise from the dead. So unless you can bring people back to life, I say we can just about toss your plan out the window" said Shono.

"by the way, where the heck are we"

"You are in a library," Treasa finally snapped, recovering from her startle. "I think you could show some common sense and notice that. Or perhaps since you appear out of no where you might never have seen a library. Let me introduce you to one. Isra, the papers, they need to be picked up before these beasts trample them."

Treasa knelt and gathered the books and papers in the sunlight, as Isra worked around the outer edge.

Cosmi looked around the room approvingly. He liked the smell of old books, and the warm sunshine made him want to find a place to stretch out and take a nap. Of course, all the decent sunbathing spots were occupied by books, including a good deal of the floor. He glanced wistfully at a perfect spot currently occupied by a large tome, realizing that he hadn't slept a wink since arriving at the Mansion. He was unsure how long ago that was, but he felt it must have been at least a day.

He turned his attention toward the dark-haired woman who appeared to be in charge. "Our sincerest apologies Miss...Treasa, was it? I assure you, we mean no harm to you or your beautiful library, and our trespassing here is completely unintentional."