"Are you gonna wake up, or am I gonna take you to the House and have you done with there?"

Fred blearily opened his eyes as a voice, harsh and flavoured with an accent he had never heard before, made its way to his ears. He was lying on the pavement, which didn't feel like any kind of pavement he knew (not that he lay on pavements often), and his head was aching as though it had been put through a strainer.

"We don't have street people on this street, mister. You should know that, even though you don't look like a nearer."

The unfamiliar term confused Fred, but the message was clear; stand up and get out of the way of this person. He pushed himself up groggily, leaning against the wall and taking in the person speaking properly. He was fairly old, with a grey, neatly-trimmed moustache and clothes that looked as though they belonged to someone living in olden-days Britain.

"Can you give me a hand getting this one out of the road as well?" the man asked, seeing Fred's face properly and giving him a smile, pointing to another person slumped in the road. "I don't mean any harm by this, I really don't, it's the orders of my superiors and I need a roof over my head."

Fred nodded, his brain completely befuddled by what was happening, and reached down to help the man with a young red-headed woman.

His heart leapt into his mouth as he saw that it was Daphne, but all he did was help to lean her against the wall and smile back at the man as he carried on his way.

As soon as the man was out of sight, he turned towards Daphne and began trying to shake her awake. She responded with a sleepy moan, and Fred knelt down next to her and pulled her into a hug, needing something familiar suddenly as he took in the scene around him.

The buildings around the street were made entirely of metal; the metal seemed to be crying, with black streaks flowing down from the window panes and doors, which oddly weren't just on the ground floor, but on the upper floors as well, so that they would open into thin air. One of the buildings had a sign saying "The House" on it, and Fred recalled the man whom he had just encountered talking about the House and taking him there to be "done with". He didn't really want to know what the man meant by "done with", and shuddered as he concentrated on waking a sleepy Daphne from her slumber.

"Daph- Daph, come on, wake up!"

"Uh… Freddy? Why aren't I in bed?"

"Daph, something really weird's happened. I need you to wake up. Come on, wake up, Daph!"

Daphne opened her eyes properly and gasped.

"Freddy- what's happening?"

"I don't know. I don't know what's going on."

Fred gently pulled Daphne up and started walking in the direction of a person walking along the street.

"Excuse me, sir, but where is here?"

The man stared at him.

"You must know where you are? You don't look like nearers, but you must know which state this is?"

Fred shook his head.

"What are nearers?" Daphne asked.

"People who come from this area."

"Locals? Natives?"

"Those aren't words used here, you two. Those are used by the people living in Anglland."

"England?"

"Anglland. The country of the Angllish."

"He must mean England," Fred whispered to Daphne before turning back and asking, "Where is here exactly?"

"This is Ohio. But not your Ohio," a voice said suddenly, cutting in before Fred or the person could have a chance to speak. All three swerved round to see a man standing there, dressed completely in black, with some kind of balaclava over his face and a cane in his hand, which seemed strange as he didn't use it for walking; he just held it, not even touching the ground with it, as though it was a clutch bag or something.

"Fred. Daphne. Come with me. We have some things to discuss."

Blindly, the pair followed, walking away from the bemused man, who sighed and walked on, muttering to himself, "Fred and Daphne? Whatever happened to sensible names like Abrepottic? Common names like those…"

"Freddy? Daphne?"

Velma called the pair's names softly up the stairs, the sizzling of pancakes behind her and Shaggy and Scooby "minding" them. She had called several times before, but they hadn't come yet and she was a little concerned as to why not.

"Guys?"

Velma pounded up the stairs and looked in on Daphne's room. She was missing, her covers left unmade and no trace of her in the room at all. Velma walked to the next room and opened the door, fully expecting the pair of them to be in there.

At first she smiled when she saw Daphne curled under the duvet, her fingers wrapped around a thread from one of the pillows, but then her eyes fell to the floor and she gasped as she saw Fred slumped on the carpet, his eyes closed. She rushed over and put her fingers under his jaw, taking his pulse and expecting him to react. He didn't. He clearly had no clue she was there.

"Freddy? Freddy, wake up. Come on, Freddy, can you hear me?"

There was still no response. Velma was growing increasingly worried. This wasn't normal or natural.

"Freddy. Freddy, open your eyes, just somehow respond to me…"

She held his hand in hers, lightly slapping his cheek, still talking to him. There was no response.

"Maybe if I get Daph to talk to him," Velma thought, now trembling as she crossed over to the bed and started to shake Daphne, trying to wake her up. It was no use. Daphne was exactly the same.

Velma stared at the two of them for a minute, and then gently knelt down and put Fred in the recovery position, not taking any risks, and hurried out of the room to call an ambulance.

"Welcome to Ohio number two," the man said as Fred and Daphne sat opposite him in a booth of what looked slightly like a Wild West-style saloon but was very metallic and sharp, with no wood in sight except for a wooden pipe poking out of a customer's mouth. Fred opened his mouth to speak, but the man shook his head and pointed towards a waitress hanging round the next table, who ordered some meal neither Fred nor Daphne had ever heard of before and walked off.

"This is not your Ohio," the man said again, and this time allowed Fred to speak.

"Where are we then? What happened? The moon vanished, and then we were here. Why are we here and what do you mean exactly?"

"This is an alternate universe."

Daphne gasped and reached up to grab Fred's ascot, a habit she had developed recently when she was shocked or scared and wanted to hold him close to her and not one that he minded especially but certainly one that carried a risk of strangulation for him.

"And why are we here in this alternate universe? And what's happening back at home?"

Thankfully for the pair, the man answered both questions precisely.

"You are here because you saw the night sky of this town from your own window, in what is called an inter-dimension visual portal, or IDVP for short. And you, back at home, appear to be in some sort of coma, but your brain activity is the activity happening in your brains now as you talk with me."

"How long are we here?"

"As long as it takes for you to find another IDVP," the man said vaguely. Daphne gasped.

"But we might never find it!"

"I will be helping you. I am a traveller between the two universes. There are several others apart from those two, but these are the two main ones and yours is the dominant universe because it is the one with the most mana."

"So where do we look for the IDVPs?" Daphne asked.

"Around. Look to the north for the nearest one. They move over a range of a few kilometres but are always in the same area. I will arrange for you to be given shelter at the local staying-house, or as you would call it, hotel, free of charge. But beware; there are people in this world who want to find you, and keep you here to make this the dominant universe, and they may be all too familiar."

"Huh? I thought we were the only people from our world here?" Fred asked, his brows drawing together in confusion.

"You are. But that does not mean that other people from your world are not replicated in this one. I will ask a waitress- or, as we call them, food-wish-taker- to give you directions to the staying-house as soon as you are done here. Meanwhile, I suggest you have some food. It's good food, and if you order the sawakhilli, then you'll recognise it. It's what you'd call pasta."

"OK. Thanks."

The man smiled at them and left, already thinking of ways to help them get back and ways to foil those who wanted them to stay.

The ward was small, with only six or seven beds, two of which Mystery Inc.'s remaining members were not sat around, watching the occupants. Fred and Daphne had been taken to hospital together and were essentially, the gang had been told, comatose.

"We'll wait for them to snap out of it; until then, we'll have to feed them through drips and put them on ventilators to ensure that their breathing isn't affected, as it sometimes is by this kind of condition," the doctor had told the three gently. Velma fought back tears as she watched Scooby gently nuzzling Fred's hand and whining.

"They'll come back," she whispered to Scooby, putting her hand on his back and stroking him. "They will."