1. Is This a Rabbit's Paw?
The novelty of the Digital World was probably only in the fact that he had never been here before. Hence why even days after arriving, Tagiru was still darting from one part of the castle to another like it was going to explode or break from his adventures and laughing every few minutes.
Not that Yuu could blame him. Shoutmon may not be the brightest Digimon, but he clearly knew an incredible architect. This thing could probably withstand Bagramon's Interdimensional Storm without much more than a wheeze of pipes and food falling off of plates. The ceilings were almost absurd.
Still, he hoped Tagiru ran out of energy eventually. He didn't know how to convince Gumdramon to retrieve him from the tall towers. He himself would enjoy Tagiru clinging to it too much to do it himself.
"Tagiru, I'm going to the library!" he called to him from the end of the hallway.
"Okay!" He heard a loud splash.
Yuu hesitated. Should he really leave him unsupervised? Then he shrugged and walked on. The library was as good of a place as any to keep looking around. And he knew Tagiru's short attention span would eventually get him in there at least for a couple of minutes.
He scanned the shelves with deliberate care. There were more books in here than he knew Shoutmon had the patience to read, not to mention the weirdest filing system he had ever seen. Then again, Digimon probably thought humans didn't organize things at all.
Yuu sighed. "Guess it would help if I knew what I was looking for to begin with." He slid to a shelf and flicked over the book titles. Apparently Xros Loaders could translate DigiCode into kana and kanji. Who knew? Wisemon, or he had even upgraded them to do that. Someone needed to get him out of the castle.
Yuu selected a book and sat down on the floor. There were chairs, sure, but it would be easier for Tagiru to trip over him than have him actually look. He flipped to a page. "The scrambling of legendary tales..." Yuu tried not to laugh. This sounded like the beginning of a fantasy novel, like that one book Inkheart or something. Who would have thought Digimon would have fiction beyond fairy tales and legends?
"Ah, you picked that one?"
Yuu jumped and looked up. An angel -literally, an angel- peered at him from over his small stack of books. They grinned sheepishly. "Sorry about that. I'm Lucemon, the librarian. That book is one of my favorites."
Yuu looked back at the book. "Is this a true story?"
"Truth is relative in our world," Lucemon replied, putting books up above Yuu's head. "Well, it is in your world, but the truth can be rewritten here. It's a pretty normal phenomenon. Most don't remember it."
Yuu frowned. "How does it work?"
"Usually due to technological advancements and discoveries in your world, things unintentionally get rewritten here, because obsolete hardware is hard to retrieve data from. For example, in one iteration, this world lost evolution. It simply forgot, because humans had lost their urge to dream." Lucemon looked down at him, blue eyes bright with excitement. Or curiosity. It was hard to tell. "At that time, it was written that the first Xros War began then and there with the first fall of a great guardian angel of Homeostasis, Bagramon."
Yuu shivered, thinking of not only Bagramon, but the one who had sought to usurp him. Lucemon pretended not to notice, putting another book away.
"Some iterations say he won that battle and that the worlds only survived due to a reset. Some say he was shown the hope existing in this world, and sacrificed himself for the good of progress. Thus the truth is scrambled, you see. It wasn't recorded well." He dropped down and flicked the pages in Yuu's book. "It's the debate over that, and other such events, that makes people keep thinking of the legendary heroes mostly as myths. The excitement when Quartzmon was taken out devolved into conspiracy theories after a while." He laughed and floated away. "Be sure to let me know what you think of it, okay?"
Yuu barely nodded, watching the angel boy float off to other shelves. He let out a shaky laugh. That… didn't make any sense. The other Digimon had never mentioned earlier Xros Wars… but it'd make sense if they didn't know about it.
Find her.
Who was it they had to find?
Yuu almost shut the book, but stopped himself. If this could give any hints to finding where Taiki-san and Ryouma had ended up, he couldn't look away from it.
"Yuu!"
Or apparently he could.
Yuu tucked the book under his arm and managed a smile. "Hey, finally bored?"
A/N: Hey guys, look what it is! It's the sequel to Pile! Said I'd get it out this year and I meant it. This is a different story, different feel, so it's starting slower. Phew! Lot to do today. Gotta keep going! This is going to be rated T until it needs to go to M, if it needs to. I think Pile would have been rated T if there had been a little less blood.
Challenges: Tale in Fragments, 30, easy list 1, prompt 'attempt', and Diversity Writing (Digimon) I53. Write in the young adult genre.