Slamming the door shut behind him, Shaggy quickly looked up and down the hallway. To his left, a well-polished wooden floor with light coming in from a glass sliding door to the backyard, to his right, a few doors and a staircase leading up to the second floor. Knowing that Brandon Bravo was only a few second behind, he had no time to think, so he had to rely on instinct and right now his instinct was to follow the glowing footsteps on the ground as he ran.

Reaching forward, Shaggy grabbed the doorknob of the door directly under the stairs, twisting it he pulled it open and swung it just as Brandon came out from the door behind him. A satisfying thud from behind was encouraging, but Shaggy did not dare look back as he rounded the corner of the stairway and ran up the stairs with Scooby-Doo keeping pace at his side.

The second floor was like something out of the old world, an open concept of stone pillars everywhere with cloth veils separating the four main rooms and a strange Turkish bath area. Weaving back and forth between the columns decorated with mosaic tiles, Shaggy jumped into a room filled with pillows and sheets of silk of a dozen decadent colors.

Sniffing underneath a pile of pillows, Scooby-Doo flipped open a hidden compartment filled with what looked like harem-girl clothing.

'Times like this make me glad I don't have much of a sense of pride.' thought Shaggy as he started to drape himself with veils as a disguise with Scooby-Doo following his lead.

In a moment Brandon threw open the curtain and found Shaggy and Scooby-Doo lying on the pillows and eating melon balls and dates from a fruit tray Scooby had found.

"Girls. What are you doing up here already? I thought you were going to sunbathe for a while longer." asked Brandon, buying into the rouse.

"Rell, rou row rit ris. Roo ruch run ris rad ror rha rhin." said Scooby-Doo.

"Well, I suppose we can spend some time in before sunset. There's nothing quite like a Hollywood sunset." said Brandon taking a seat and opening his mouth expecting a grape from the platter.

Taking turns, Shaggy and Scooby-Doo tried tossing grapes into his mouth, but they bounced off his nose, chin, cheeks, and forehead with neither one of them landing one in his mouth. After the sixth miss, Brandon's eyebrow started to twitch as he reached forward and ripped the veils from their faces.

"You two!" shouted Brandon as he pulled out a switchblade and faded into a swirl of reds and yellows.

"Yikes." said Shaggy, throwing a pile of silk sheets in Brandon's direction as he jumped up from the cushions and dashed away into the confusing hallway. As Brandon struggled with the sheets, Shaggy realized he had lost all orientation on this floor, the columns all looked alike, as though he were trapped in some grand hall in old Cordoba or something.

Light-reflecting from a chandelier caught his eye, and for a moment Shaggy could swear he saw the outline of a person standing there, shaking the crystals. Dashing forward, he approached the dining room and saw the strange creature standing across the table from him, and though humanoid in shape, it looked more machine than man. Dark green in color, its outline was broken up with a thousand, small vertical lines of light green of different lengths, thickness, in a pattern so random it almost had the appearance of camouflage.

Reaching the table, Shaggy looked and saw a dozen almost transparent copies of the figure sitting at the other tables, but while the main one seemed solid, the others were more like illusions, or after-images. Each one stood up and walked in a different direction and seemed to break into a hundred shards of light before disappearing. If the main one had a mouth, Shaggy would swear that it had a smug smile on its face. Hopping atop the table, it jumped back down next to Shaggy and with a glow of white energy, it seemed to join with him.

"Not running anymore?" asked Brandon from an unknown location nearby.

"Actually, that's exactly what I was thinking of," said Shaggy, turning around, he leaned forward to place his hand on his knee with his right hand while throwing back his left shoulder in the opposite direction. A strange pose, but he couldn't help but feel right doing it when he realized that the apparition, his Stand, was doing the same pose behind him.

"A Stand? So, it's like Magenta said. You were all in contact with the bone." said Brandon.

"The bone, right. That's what we came here to get, but something tells me that you're not important enough to have responsibility for it." said Shaggy, intentionally provoking Brandon with the hope of figuring out his location.

Glowing footsteps on the ground quickly appeared going off to his left, and Shaggy righted himself and sidestepped just in time to avoid a chair being thrown at him. Despite his best efforts, it was impossible to tell where Brandon was.

"You got his scent Scoob?" asked Shaggy.

"Ruh-ruh." said Scooby-Doo, "Ris rhole race rells rike rerfume."

A strong blow hit Shaggy center mass and sent him reeling to the ground, the shock, and the pain was not nearly as bad as the landing as the hard tile floor was only interrupted by a stone pillar that caught his shoulder.

"Stiff Little Fingers, go!" shouted Shaggy as he finally came to a stop.

Before he could sit up, he was unsure if he was seeing double or not, for once again his Stand seemed to split apart into a dozen different clones which scattered in all directions, but this time was different, for each one also seemed to have a copy of himself running along with them.

"What kind of trick are you playing at now?" Asked Brandon, his voice growing distant with his footsteps running after one of the copies.

When the footsteps reached the stairway down, Shaggy sat up and saw the glowing footprints on the ground leading in the other direction. Carefully making his way through the hallway, he entered a room that opened up into an observation deck, whose balcony overlooked the gardens on the side of the house. Sitting down, Shaggy reached forward to pluck an orange straight from the branches of the tree and gave it a squeeze to check its ripeness.

"Being in danger has never been a hamper on my appetite," said Shaggy, peeling the orange and sampling the sweet wedges inside.

"Well hi up there. I like your dog." said a voice from down below.

Looking down, Shaggy saw one of the girls that had been with Brandon earlier, though a blonde, she had a slight southern accent and did not come off as a 'valley girl'.

"Rhy rank rou." said Scooby-Doo, followed by his signature giggle.

"Is Brandon down there?" asked Shaggy.

"I think so, I just saw him come back from downstairs running from room to room for some reason. I think he might be chasing a mouse or something." said the girl.

A glint of metal on a table near the girl caught Shaggy's eye, a keychain next to a large sports jacket, and a devious idea came in an instant. Carefully hopping down from the second floor, Shaggy, made sure he was out of sight from any window as he moved to the back yard.

"Like are those Brandon's car keys? I just forgot that I have to run a quick errand and he's my ride, but I don't want to interrupt him if he's doing housework," said Shaggy.

"Yeah, they're his keys. He's a little possessive about his car, but if you think he'd be chill with it then I'm sure it'll be fine." said the Valley girl.

"Thanks, see you around," said Shaggy. Grabbing the keys, he ran off around the side of the house and made his way to the driveway where Brandon's white BMW sat parked next to a pink and yellow roadster. Unlocking the car, Shaggy got into the driver's seat but he paused upon seeing a manila folder in the passenger seat.

"Take the folder, drop the keys, and get the black remote on his console before you hop in." said the girl's voice from behind.

Turning his head, Shaggy saw the girl was zipping up a pink jumpsuit and hopping into the driver's seat of the roadster. Sharing a confused look with Scooby-Doo, Shaggy did exactly what she suggested, and hopped into her passenger seat with Scooby-Doo sitting on his lap as she pulled back in reverse down Brandon's driveway. Thankfully the remote had opened the driveway gate just long enough for them to escape before Brandon left the house.

With a clean getaway down the hills, the girl laughed as Shaggy looked back fearing that they would get involved in a chase.

"Don't worry about him, even if he did start chasing us, I'd lose him." she said as she looked into the rear-view mirror to put on some lipstick.

"Wait a minute. I recognize you now," said Shaggy as realization dawned on him from his adventures with the Wacky Racers, "It's been too long Penelope."

"A pleasure as always Shaggy," said Penelope, giggling as she blew through a yellow light and jumping her car down a slope in the road and missing not even a beat as she shifted gears and made a sharp left turn which shot the gap between two other cars on the busy street.

"Is the folder for me, or for you though?" asked Shaggy, shifting in his seat as Scooby-Doo clung on for dear life.

"Now that is a long story," said Penelope, making a right turn which nearly lifted her wheels off the ground, she swung her car into an alleyway to park it out of sight from the main road before parking.

With a nod, Shaggy handed over the folder but kept his grip on it as she touched it.

"I've got the time to listen," said Shaggy.

"You ever hear about a race back during the old west called Steel Ball Run?" asked Penelope.

"These days? It seems to be the only thing I ever hear about." said Shaggy.

"Really?" said Penelope, a smile slowly spreading across her face as Shaggy finally let go of the folder, she opened it and looked through a few papers before holding up some kind of fancy invitation card.

"How about we talk about it over lunch?" asked Shaggy.

"Mind if we make it dinner? I've got to go see about a horse right now." said Penelope.

"A horse?" asked Shaggy, as Penelope turned her car back on and revved her engine as she drove towards the exit leading to Pasadena.

Stand Guide:

Stiff Little Fingers (1977 Northern Ireland Punk Rock Band) - Stand of "Shaggy" Norville Rogers
Power - D
Speed - A
Range - B
Durability/Endurance - C
Precision - A
Development - B

Stiff Little Fingers is a medium-range, humanoid stand that has the appearance of a man whose body is broken up by a series of vertical lines randomly placed across its body/torso/arms/legs/face (reference, album cover Nobody's Heroes).

Stiff Little Fingers can create doubles of Shaggy's stand which seem to have predictive powers, running forth into the future until they are destroyed, leaving only one whose footprints glow - which is the way Shaggy should run in order to have the best chance of avoiding injury, or worse. These shadows can also act as decoys for people who can see Stands and lead them away from Shaggy should he require another way of escape.

Reference:
Penelope is Penelope Pitstop, a regular of the Wacky Racers, who has had crossover adventures with Mystery Inc before (but Shaggy was not used to seeing her with wet hair or in a bikini those times and did not recognize her at first)