Shawn is based on the Animated Lust (rated PG!) forum participant known as Shawn and, as such, is copyright to himself, and used with permission.

The below shows and characters are used for fanfiction purposes only, I disclaim all ownership:

Digimon and associated characters and concepts are © Akiyoshi Hongo - Toei Animation; © Bandai

Mythical Detective Loki Ragnarok and associated characters and concepts are © Sakura Kinoshita

We're Not in Kansas Anymore...

One of the spare bedrooms indeed... Loki's house was a not-so-small, if slightly creepy, mansion. In front a discrete sign announced, "The Mythical Detective Agency."

The first thing Mimi tried was calling Tai. His number didn't work. She tried Izzy's – and got someone who'd never heard of him. She tried his secretary, and that wasn't any good either. Shawn was getting suspicious by this time, so he checked the phone book. IzTech Industries didn't exist and no one they knew in Japan was listed. They tried directory assistance and struck out there, too.

So Mayura volunteered to lead the tour of the house while Yamino started dinner. Loki and Shawn fell in silently behind – it was quickly obvious the two women were sister-spirits at heart because soon they were jabbering away a mile a minute about everything from the Digiworld to Atlantis to whether or not the government actually was hiding anything at Area 51. Shawn doubted he or Loki could've gotten a word in edgewise, what with all the female bonding going on. He spared a passing thought to wondering why he was following the conversation so well – his Japanese was passable, but he was nowhere near as fluent as Mimi was in English.

The girls continued their instant friendship all through dinner, until Mayura had to go home. Then Loki invited Shawn and Mimi into his study.

"Tell me in detail just what happened before you – almost – fell on Fenrir," he requested.

So Shawn explained about running Babblefish, which suddenly went crazy and started translating webpages into unasked-for languages; about the windows opening into the Digiworld which filled with hex code, then with ones and zeros; and about the hole opening at his feet and how he slid in, then how Mimi had lunged and been trapped along with him. Mimi chimed in with a description of how her Digivice unexpectedly lit up, and how Palmon had looked up, in shock, to say the Digiworld was tearing apart.

Shawn could almost see the gears going around in Loki's mind as he digested this.

They all sat for a moment in thought, then Loki said, "It seems we need to get you back though one of those windows – and to do that we'll need to recreate one first. I have a translation program on my computer – what were you researching?"

"Ancient frescos and mosaics, specifically those illustrating a known narrative, and how these compare to modern graphic novels."

This was met with a rather stunned silence on the part of both Mimi and Loki. Never say I can't stop a conversation, thought Shawn. He added apologetically, "I was helping a friend with a term paper – he knows I'm into animation, and ... uh –" He trailed off.

Loki blinked. Good – I can surprise him. Nice to know he isn't totally unflappable.

Then Loki said, "Well, we certainly can try to recreate that."

He led them over to a corner cabinet. It opened to show a state-of-the-art PC setup, complete with a printer/scanner, oversize flat-screen monitor, top quality speakers with subwoofers – the works. Izzy might even have approved.

Loki booted up the machine, brought up a metasearch engine, and plugged in some terms. As the first hits came in, he refined the search, selected for "any language" and started skimming the new set of results. Sure enough, in among the various articles were some in languages other than Japanese. Loki chose one in English, pulled up the translation program, and started feeding the article through to it.

And they waited.

And nothing happened.

"We need to connect to the Digiworld," Shawn said. Duh, he thought to himself. Nothing like stating the obvious.

But it had been the catalyst that Mimi needed.

"Oh!" she suddenly exclaimed. "Oh, I can do that!"

She pulled out her Digivice, explained to Loki, "We use these to help our Digimon Digivolve," and activated it, just like she did when Palmon was changing into Togemon. As usual, a light flashed from the Digivice...

...Back in the real world Palmon suddenly looked up – for a moment she could have sworn she'd heard Mimi call her...

But no. It was gone.

If it had ever been...

...Back in the real world Loki's computer changed from English to Russian, to Urdu, to hex code. A small square of light, looking considerably like a window, popped up, floating in the air, and filled with ASCII numbers. It slowly began to expand, and both it and Loki's PC changed to flowing zeros and ones.

And Loki held his hands in front of him, palms flat forward, and out of thin air pulled a crescent-headed, ribbon-wrapped staff dangling a ring. He swung it in a slow, deliberate arc to point it at the floating window, said a phase that refused to translate into either Japanese or English – and the floating window shifted to a slowly rotating lozenge-shaped pane of glass. The pouring numbers froze in place.

Shawn and Mimi both gaped, and Shawn found himself lunging for sanity again, while Loki calmly circled the slowly rotating diamond, looking at it from all sides.

In an aside, Loki said, "I don't usually do this in front of..." He hesitated a moment, then substituted, "...normal people," for whatever he had been going to say. "But normal people don't fall between universes, do they? So you're hardly usual."

"I need to think about this," he continued. "Can we talk again in the morning?"

So Mimi and Shawn left him contemplating a diamond-shaped pane spinning in midair.

Yamino was the perfect majordomo – he could have stood in for Jeeves. Not only had he made up the bed in a sumptuous room, he had also left out small packets of necessities for each of them – toothbrush and paste, soap, shampoo, a shaving kit for Shawn, a change of underwear and night things for both, some basic cosmetics for Mimi – along with a carryall sling that would have done fine for carry-on luggage. Heavens knew how he had obtained it on such short notice.

Ready for sleep, Mimi collapsed on the edge of the bed. She looked up at Shawn.

"Will the children be okay?" – in the privacy of their room she no longer had to keep up appearances, and the tears began to flow. He reached for her, pulled her close, and together they fell back onto the bed. She buried her head against his chest and now she was crying in earnest.

He thought of the triplets, how small they had been when first born; the awesome wonder he'd felt when he first held them. Of how he'd then realized he would kill for them, or die for them if necessary, in order to keep them safe.

Mimi cried herself to sleep that night. Unknown to her, Shawn lay awake for hours, staring at the ceiling, tears leaking from his eyes as well.