[Indigo]

Indigo stared. "Wow. I've never known anyone else who could do that." She shook her head and muttered, "Booker, Booker" under her breath. "Um. Okay."

She pushed open one of the doors and led the way inside, threatening to kick Lysander if he didn't hold the door. Just inside was what looked like a waiting room, with a heavy wooden door in the back wall. A spiral staircase led up to the right. There was a chain across it.

"Er, yeah. The bottom floor is sort of like your office," Indigo explained. "The top floor has all the house-type stuff. You want to go up? The office is nothing you haven't seen before. Probably."

"You won't be going anywhere," hissed a voice. A shadow detached itself from the wall. Within moments Indigo's right arm was twisted up behind her back. There was an unpleasant snapping noise.

"You're kinda stupid." Indigo moved fast. She kicked backwards with hasty yet precise aim. Whoever was behind her dodged her foot (luckily for him), forcing him to let go of her arm. Then she hit him with her left hand hard enough to knock him over. Blue light enveloped her right arm as she grinned and said--

"Oh, sorry..."

The person in question shrugged and stood up, fingering his nose. "I should know better than ta sneak up on ya, huh?" He grinned. He was definitely human, unlike most of Indigo's other stalkers. He was also extremely tall. His magenta hair was cut oddly, as if it had just been hacked off randomly. He wore a very dark gray suit and a bizarre deep purple cape which somehow allowed him to blend seamlessly into shadows. He had a black eye and various cuts and scrapes, but he always looked like that.

His gray eyes turned on Wolfie. "Hey, a new one? I'm Terrel, unless I feel like bein' someone else, ha ha. Stalker and fighter extroardinaire. And apparently out of the loop." He glared at Indigo. "So, youse want a tour or somethin'?"

[Wolfie_Barrow]

Wolfie smiled. "I think you and Grim should get together and have tea." At the sound of this, Grim gave her a confused look.

"What do you mean? I don't even like tea."

She waved her hand at him. "Never mind that. Sure, I'd like a tour. Unless..." she glanced at Indigo. "You'd like to be in charge of that...."

[Indigo]

Indigo shrugged. "It's best to go along with someone who can break my arm."

Terrel would have grinned, except that he already was. "Right. I dunno what yer name is, girl, but I'll bet yer the new Dreamworker or some such. C'mon now. Ya don' needa see that old office, neither. Jus' follow me." He carefully picked the lock on the chain and swung it aside, then ran up the stairs like a...thing that runs quickly.

"I hate that," Indigo muttered. "Sometimes I think I should just drag him around with me to keep him from getting stuck in bars." She paused, thinking. "Locking the Workshop would help, too." She followed Terrel up the stairs. Lysander left the door to follow.

It may interest you to know, at this point, that Terrel is not conventionally sane. He's the kind of person who assaults people for no reason and then apologizes, and often gets stuck in bars. He's also skilled at picking locks and other criminal activities, not quite matching Indigo. All in all, he's an interesting person to have on your side and a dangerous person if he doesn't like you. Like Indigo, only slightly less so.

[Wolfie_Barrow]

Wolfie followed Indigo cautiously. She'd never been here before, but she trusted her friend, so she tried not to jump at little things like the sound of Grim following too close behind her.

"Slow down, will you?" she whined. "Just because you're used to climbing stairs and thus are very fast on them doesn't mean you need to show off and bite my heels the whole time."

"Sorry," he grunted. He slowed down, but she could tell that it took concentration for him to do so.

'How high do these stairs go?' she thought. It seemed to be taking forever.

[Indigo]

Eventually the stairs ended in a very small room. There was a door in it. Terrel opened it with a flourish. "Now, ya gotta go on t'rough--"

"I've had enough of this." Indigo waved dramatically. A blue tendril disappeared into Terrel's chest. A few moments later, a brown stream came out and dissipated. Terrel blinked.

"Oh. Uh." He looked around. "Thanks, I think." He stepped through the door, purple cape swirling.

"Stupid literary effect spell." Indigo followed him. Outside, there was a fwoosh. A tree burst into flame.

[Wolfie_Barrow]

Wolfie jumped and stared at the tree in horror for a second before realization spread over her face and she said, "Literary effect spell, huh? Interesting." Grim, used to these kinds of things since he often traveled through different ghost lands with burning houses and people and other such things.

"Is there any way to put it back to normal?" Wolfie asked, eyeing the tree in fascination. Confused, Grim tapped her shoulder.

"Why are you staring at it?"

"Well, here in the world of the living, things don't normally burst into flames."

"Oh."

[Indigo]

"What?" Indigo looked out the window. "Oh. That was me. Sorry." She moved her hand. The tree went out. "Everything has to be so dramatic."

"And no one gets it when you say something about a fiendish thingy," Lysander added.

"What?"

"Never mind." Both Lysander and Indigo wandered off. "Yeah, the tour sorta breaks down at this point" was Indigo's only explanation.

Strange things happen when people wander around in long-empty buildings...

All the rooms up here were empty, except for one. There was a large wooden chair in there, and currently it had Terrel on it. He was standing, staring out the window. Suddenly, and for no obvious reason, he slipped and almost fell, banging his ankle on the chair. He swore, none too quietly.

"Up until then you reminded me of someone I once knew. I think he was a parody too. V-something."

Terrel spun around and almost lost his balance. Behind him stood a man wearing a strangely shiny suit and a ridiculous hat. It had a bat wing dangling off the side, and glue showed where the other had fallen off. He was smiling faintly, as if at a joke that only he had heard. There was a reddish stain on his shoulder.

He was slightly transparent.

"My name is Damp*," he said in a faraway voice. "And no one ever told me what happens when you're trapped in any building with something that's got claws. It wasn't fun." He laughed at Terrel's expression. "I'm going to go find Wolfie." He faded.

Terrel shook his head and left the room. Damp dissipated and reappeared in the general vicinity of Wolfie.

*Ghosts are fun. The book that I'm writing right now happened a long time ago, compared to this roleplay, because otherwise this wouldn't work. And no, Damp doesn't usually live here, and yes, I'm just showing off. Sorry.

[Wolfie_Barrow]

"Gah!" Wolfie stumbled as an almost see-through man appeared before her. Grim caught her fall, and she accidentally elbowed him in the process of trying to straighten herself.

"Oh, sorry, Grim," she murmured. She turned to the figure in front of her and said, "I'm guessing you're some kind of spirit?"

Grim, who was used to spirits, began to assess him, and decided that, at the moment, he wasn't exactly something to be alarmed about.

Wolfie, on the other hand, was used to being quite ghost-less because of living in a cave in which the only other life (or death) around was Chouko. "Er..." she called to Indigo. "Uh, just to... get out of this situation... do I happen to get an office?" She grinned and chuckled nervously.

[Indigo]

"I could be a spirit if you want." Damp looked at the wall. He gave the sense of someone who was laughing at you silently. "I prefer to think of myself as a...oh, I don't know, posthumous entrepreneur?" He pulled something out of his pocket for the sake of the plot, because too much dialogue gets annoying. "Oh, and there's an office downstairs. I know this place like I would know the back of my hand if I could see it properly. Not that I live here--well, I say live..."

He tucked whatever it was back in his pocket. "I suppose you know who I'm supposed to be? Funny how parody people are so little like their counterparts. V-something-or-other, for example. Also dead, of course. I'm not going to bore you with random statements, though." Damp absently stuck his hand through the wall and contemplated it for a moment. "I just wanted to see your reaction." He dissipated again.

"Dag!" Indigo burst in and glared at the air. "He's always trying to scare off people. The something derogatory. Um." She stared awkwardly at the ceiling. "So. What do you think?"

[Wolfie_Barrow]

"What do I think?" Wolfie felt like taking hold of her friend's shoulders and shaking her. "It's fantastic here! I accept."

"Accept what?" Grim, not being in the loop of things, was completely confused.

"Uhmm something," she waved a hand at him, a gesture she seemed to be rather fond of. "The, eh, posthumous something or other, er, mentioned an office downstairs... eh... Oh, hey, wait, do you have an office?" In a flash she'd switched from one subject to another. Grim smiled and look down at his black boots, noticing how scuffed up they looked. Playing absently with one of the many torn segments of cloth on his shirt, he leaned forward and muttered in Wolfie's ear, "I've got to go. See you later."

She watched him go, and then turned back again to stare curiously at Indigo.

[Indigo]

Indigo laughed. "Me? An office? Do you see those things fitting together in a sentence?" She made a face at nothing. "Oh, and don't call Damp that. He doesn't deserve it. He really did turn out rather wrong..."

Lysander ran in. "Hey, Terrel's leaving. And Roth's, um, on the roof. Is there a staircase?"

"You've been in here, what, a hundred times?" Indigo pushed open a door at the far end of the room. "Ta-da. Et cetera. Um. So. I need to go, because it's nearly five AM in Ankh-Morpork. Do you want a ride somewhere or do you want to stay here?"

[Wolfie_Barrow]

"Hum..." Wolfie tapped her chin with a finger. Her question would probably receive a no, but it's worth asking, right? "Would I be able to come with you?"

She absentmindedly wondered just how long it would take to go from Vandermeer to Discworld. Who knows. Perhaps Indigo has some kind of teleportation device. In a world where dragons can suddenly land on roofs and trees suddenly burst into flames with no apparent warning, why couldn't there be some kind of teleportation?

[Indigo]

"Sure...?" Indigo pulled something out of the air, studied it, and put it back in its invisible drawer. "It's raining there now, and I'm not sure why that's important, but apparently it is. How well can you climb walls?"

"Hurry up?" called Roth. "I don't mean to rush you, just that the roof's beginning to creak--"

"Hover, then!" Indigo began juggling invisible objects and a small rock. "..."

[Wolfie_Barrow]

Wolfie grinned and slipped off her sneakers, tossing them in the nearest garbage can. "It makes it easier if you take your shoes off." Following after her friend she said, "Finally things are starting to get interesting... Well, they were before, but..." She laughed, startling even herself. "The ceiling is creaking!"

A fly buzzed into the room and landed inside of Wolfie's discarded left sneaker. If sat there for a minute before making a cartoonish gagging sound and falling over onto it's back. It died of a seizure, because of the stench that was Wolfie's feet.

[Indigo]

Indigo jumped onto Roth's back, landing directly behind his shoulders and causing the ceiling to sink a little. Lysander scrambled into his saddlebag. Presumably, Wolfie also boarded roth before he took off, which he proceeded to do very quickly.

The city of Gyptia watched as the Dream Catcher's mount swooped toward the street and then--vanished with a loud BOOM as all the air rushed to fill the space.

The air over Ankh-Morpork fwooshed, causing raindrops to scatter, as Roth appeared in it. Someone, asleep in the apartment above the Post Office, subconsciously registered the noise and, somewhere in his mind, realized that it was going to be one of those mornings.