A/N: This story is based off of my speculation piece What If? In which the events Digimon Adventure 01 are altered from small changes to the storyline. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: Digimon is owned by Bandai, not some introverted teen lying on a futon at home.
The warm summer day was passing along normally as one would in a summer camp full of rambunctious kids. A high-pitched shrilling ring broke through the laughter and talk of most of the campers, who turned to the equally mystified counselors. The whistles around their necks were untouched, and the only other person that owned one was a child who…
"Taichi Yagami! You give that back!" the short-haired Hikari Yagami chased after her older brother as he plowed through a game of soccer. He was puffing out high notes from the whistle in his mouth, mischievous side overcoming any sort of maturity he had at the tender age of eleven. This was sweet revenge for allowing their mom to nag him in front of all the other kids before they got on the bus.
"Ugh! You're getting your germs all over it!" his 8 year old sister complained loudly as he ran into the safety of the forest. He knew that she would never go too far in; and since he had explored parts of it during previous summers, he knew of some great secluded places. By the sound of Hikari's voice yelling out his name getting fainter, Taichi knew he was in the clear.
"Whoa! Watch it!" Something suddenly stopped his headlong rush between the trees. He fell to the ground and coughed the whistle out of his mouth involuntarily. It was only through his fast reflexes that he was able to catch it before it hit the dirt. He glared up at the newcomer, obnoxiously spiky blonde head all too familiar.
"What was that about, Mattie?!" Tai growled as he stood up to come level with the familiar guy.
"Get it right, Taichi. The name's Yamato Ishida to you. Not Matt, Mattie, Yama, or anything else," he crossed his arms coolly and jerked his head to a smaller boy standing behind him. "Besides, you almost hit Takeru."
Ah, right. These two were those brothers with divorced parents. Taichi's anger melted away as he grinned sheepishly down at the near collision victim, "Sorry, kid."
"It's fine," Takeru threw him a smile before pulling his older brother away. "Now, come on, Matt! We've got to find it before anyone else does!"
"Find what?" Taichi's inner curiosity was piqued.
"You haven't heard?" Yamato actually had the gall to smirk as Takeru dragged him past a set of trees. "Well, you'll hear about it soon enough… when we win."
"Why I oughta…" the goggle head trailed off as the brothers disappeared through the foliage. Something had snapped a twig behind him. Was it Hikari trying to sneak up on him?
"There you are, Tai."
"Gah!" he jumped back as a gloved hand touched his shoulder. The fear quickly drained away when he realized who it was. "Agh, Sora. Don't scare me like that!"
Sora Takenouchi, an old soccer buddy of his, just shrugged, "It's not my fault that you're so jumpy, Tai."
"Ah, sorry, it's not you I'm just –"
"Being paranoid about Hikari ambushing you to get her whistle back?"
"I… uh," How was she always so spot on about these things? "Yeah."
"Well, good," Sora suddenly grabbed his wrist, raising the hand that was holding the small metal noise maker in clear view. "Because she asked me to get it for her."
"Aww, come on, Sora!" Taichi tugged hopelessly against his friend's iron grip. "I'm just teasing her a bit!"
"You really shouldn't be so mean to her, Tai," She said sagely and held his brown gaze in her crystal blue one. "She is your only sister."
"I…" He struggled to find the right words when a cold white something fell on his nose and evaporated. "What the…?!"
"It's," Sora released her hold on Taichi and raised her hands out to catch the drifting substance. "Snowing? In the summer?"
The fall of the unexpected snowflakes increased exponentially until the ground and the trees were covered and the kids had no choice but to run for cover. Luckily, they were not too far from a cabin at the edge of a clearing. They slid the door shut to escape the chilling ice that had pounded against their exposed skin. Mounds of packed ice had covered the windows, allowing no outside light, but the glow from a short red haired boy's laptop and a taller boy's flashlight was enough to make out the other people who had also taken refuge in the cabin.
"Looks like you got caught in it too, huh?" Yamato was leaning against a wall as coolly as ever. Next to him, Takeru was failing in his attempts to emulate his older brother.
"If I knew we were going to be hit by a freak snow storm," A girl dressed in fashionable cowgirl garb wailed as she sat curled up in a far corner of the one roomed building. "I would have brought my fur coat!"
"Mimi!"
"It's faux fur!" Mimi Tachikawa shot back, not understanding the real reason behind the Sora's admonishment. Even as cabin mates, the girls had yet to find anything in common, one being a tomboy and the other being a girly girl.
"Is it really the best time to be talking about clothes?" the tallest out of them had the typical appearance of a nerd. He pushed up his glasses nervously, inadvertently promoting the thought. "We should worry about why there's a snow storm in the middle of summer! Koushirou, do you have any ideas?"
"No, Jou, I don't recall ever reading anything about this happening in the history of Japan. It's quite the phenomenon," Koushirou Izumi closed his laptop in frustration, leaving Jou Kido's flashlight as the only way for them to see. "My Pibook isn't working properly. The blizzard must be causing some interference. So, we're just going to have to wait here until the storm's settled before we can start figuring this mystery out."
And that's what they did. They waited in awkward silence as the sound of the snow pounding against the rural cabin gradually diminished into a soft, whistling breeze. When they were sure that the worst of the raging weather had subsided, they opened the sliding door to reveal a glaring landscape straight out of a winter documentary.
"Wow," Taichi marveled as his breathe came out as warm, visible vapors. Before he could step out, an energetic bundle dressed in green shot cut in front of him.
"Whooo! Let's have a snowball fight!" Takeru bounded out onto the soft white ice, not minding even as he fell chest deep into it. Yamato immediately rushed over to help him out, showing a sickly amount of brotherly concern. Tai watched them for a bit, frowning as he wondered if Hikari had found shelter from the sudden blizzard as well.
"Worried about your sister?" Sora smiled knowingly at him, shoving him playfully into the snow.
"Argh! Geez, Sora!" the goggle-head shook his head vigorously to get the cold powder out of his hair, his face a bright red. He stood up, itching to pull the ginger into the slush with him.
"Brr, it's freezing!" Mimi complained, rubbing her arms for warmth as she ventured out of the cabin along with Jou and Koushirou.
"We should head back to the camp," the bespectacled fretter suggested as he glanced up at the sky worriedly, as if it would start producing more heinous weather. "The counselors are probably taking a head count right now. They'll start searching for us when they find out we're missing."
"By my calculations, it will take us hours to walk through this deep snow. It would be better to wait for the longer-legged adults to find us. Besides, we're not that far from camp," Koushirou reasoned.
"Yeah, Jou! Listen to Izzy," Taichi laughed, anger at Sora dissipating quickly as he fell back voluntarily to make a snow angel. "Just wait here and enjoy this wonderful boon!"
"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHH!" everyone swiveled their heads to watch Takeru rolling uncontrollably down the hill, forming into a human snowball, and collide with a tree at the base of the incline. For added comedic effect, more snow fell from the branches and increased the pile on top of the little boy.
"T.K.!" Yamato tried to rush down the hill to get to his brother, but he had to content himself to trudging quite slowly through the deep snow and occasionally shooting daggers at the laughing Taichi. The snow pile was shaking visibly as Takeru began to free himself. In a moment or so, he would be out to join everyone else in waiting for grown-ups to come get them.
Unless beams of light shot out of the sky to send strange little electronic devices into all of the older kids' hands and sent them to another world.
The dark clouds were already gone when the blonde child poked his head out of the mound to see… nobody. A gust of wind emphasized the emptiness of the area. He was alone. Another one of the devices lay next to him.
"…Matt? Anybody?"
A/N: Truthfully, I'm not really sure where I'm going with this. If you wish for me to continue, feel free to drop a review. Suggestions for future chapters are also welcome. Thank you for reading! :D