Takeru awoke to the sun's warm rays beating down on him, indicating the beginning of a new day. He stretched his arms, letting out a yawn, only to shut his mouth as the sound coming from his mouth sounded freakishly unlike it would have come from him.
"Weird." He thought to himself. "But I heard that sound before… Can't seem to place it off the top of my head, though…" Still not completely awake, he rubbed his eyes with his… paws? Takeru stared in disbelief and confusion at the tiny black things that should have been hands. But these were not his hands. These were paws. These were Patamon's paws. This was not good.
Shaking with nervousness, he brought a paw towards his face. He let out a terrified gasp, his worst fears confirmed. He felt not smooth skin around his mouth and eyes, but soft fur. Rubbing both paws all over himself, he looked down and realized that not just his face and hands, but his entire body was that of his own digimon's.
"There is a perfectly good explanation for this." He had yet to awake, and was still dreaming. Yes. This was all just a dream. Unable to effectively pinch himself, Takeru grabbed one of his outrageously long ears and pulled with all the strength he could muster, but to no avail. He produced more than enough pain to awake him from any dream, but didn't seem to come out of unconsciousness.
Now something was definitely wrong. "Don't panic, Takeru. Panic will not help. Panic will not solve anything. Panic will not tell you why you look like a chubby bat-eared digimon when you should be looking like a teenage boy!" Breathing in and out, he nearly hyperventilated himself.
He forced himself to calm down, taking a few deep breaths. Okay, now that he had come to grips with what was going on, he wondered what to do about it. He didn't dare wake up his own body, partly because he didn't know who was in it now, partly because he didn't want to know who was in it now.
The only person who could help him now was Hikari. Although the idea of her seeing him like this made his stomach flip-flop, she was the only one able to open a digital gate, maybe track down Izumi, and figure out this whole situation. His eagerness to set things right again outweighed his vanity.
Crawling over to the still sleeping Hikari, he nudged her shoulder slightly, whispering in her ear. "Hikari, wake-up!" No response. He poked harder. "Hikari!" he increased the volume on his pleas "Wake-up!"
Hikari rolled over to one side, but not before Takeru heard a faint mumble of "Go 'way… eating fish… much fish…"
"Eating fish?" he wondered, "Odd dream..." Getting as close as he possibly could to her ear, Takeru took in a deep breath, and let out the loudest possible scream his body could muster.
"HIKARI! WAKE-UP!" he screamed in an almost shrill voice.
The sleeping girl awoke with a start, sitting upright and knocking Takeru flat on his back, as well as sending Tailmon tumbling. Looking down, she saw Patamon lying there. "Patamon, why are you waking me up so rudely? And why are you calling me Hikari?"
"Why am I calling you Hikari? Because you- wait… who do you think you are?"
"I'm Tailmon, of course. Who else would I be?"
"Tailmon!?" He proclaimed in bewilderment. "Look at yourself!" So he was not the only one with a case of displaced identity…
"Hikari" studied her hands in wonderment, as if she were looking at them for the first time. She examined herself, looking puzzled at what she was seeing.
"Pa… Patamon? Wha… what happened? Why am I in Hikari's body?"
"Beats me." The small digimon said, shrugging his shoulders "Probably the same reason I'm in Patamon's body."
"You mean… You're not Patamon?"
"Nope… I'm really… Takeru." He said sheepishly, his voice barely raised above a whisper when he gave his own name. It was a difficult to admit to anyone, especially Hikari. Or at least someone who looked like Hikari.
"Well, If you're in there…" Tailmon said, pointing to Takeru's new self.
"…And you're in there…" Takeru said, pointing back.
"Then who's in there?" They said in unison, pointing to each of their previous bodies.
"Kami, please don't let Hikari be in my body." Takeru thought to himself. That was possibly the only way to make this situation any worse. He wanted Hikari to know him, yes, but not know him that well. He went off to investigate who he was being inhabited by, while Tailmon checked on her own self.
Crawling over to where her old body had fallen, Tailmon hesitated due to the absolute weirdness that came from seeing yourself from an objective point of view. She faced up to the challenge, however, prodding the cat digimon with her finger.
"Taichi, I don't wanna go to school…" came a garbled response as the body turned away, trying to get comfortable in a bed that wasn't there.
"Oh boy. She's in for something worse than school… Well, almost worse." Tailmon wondered how Hikari would react to finding herself placed in the body of a digimon. An extremely attractive and beautiful digimon, yes, but a digimon none the less. "Gomen, Hikari, but you'd better wake up."
"Awww…" the Hikari in Tailmon's body rolled over, and peered upward at her own face, a look of confusion. "Hey, since when do I have a mirror over my bed?"
"Um… well... you're not in your bed, and I'm not your reflection… Y'see… well… oh, just look at yourself!"
Hikari looked down at her body, and immediately freaked out, as would be expected. "Why am I in Tailmon's body? How did this happen? Who are you?"
Tailmon sat on the ground, crossing her legs and getting ready to brief Hikari for the bad news. "Answers, in reverse order: I'm Tailmon, don't know, probably the same reason that Takeru is in Patamon's body."
"Takeru is in Patamon's body?" Hikari breathed a sigh of half-relief. She would have done her best to hide her present situation from Takeru, and knowing that he was in the same boat made it seem a little less embarrassing. A little.
"Yeah, and Patamon's in mine." Takeru said as he and Patamon walked over in each other's bodies.
"This is too weird…" Patamon said, examining his limbs. "I can't believe I'm actually in control of your body, Takeru!"
"Now that we've figured out who is who, what are we going to do about it?" Hikari asked the group.
"Good question. We should probably contact Izumi and see if he can do anything about this." Takeru.
"What about Gennai? He might know what's going on." Tailmon suggested.
"That's a good idea, too. Patamon, get me my D-Terminal, please?" Takeru asked.
Digging into his pockets, Patamon found his partner's mini-computer. "Here you go." He handed it down to Takeru, who proceeded to tap out a message, despite finding it awkward and time-consuming to type with paws.
"There!" Takeru cried in achievement, after spending five minutes a task that he usually did in five seconds. He'd never take five opposable digits for granted again, that was for sure. "Until they reply, we should probably just relax, maybe get used to these new bodies while we've got some spare time."
No matter how many times she told herself that it was really Takeru inside, Tailmon just couldn't get over the fact that Patamon was actually giving orders instead of taking them for once. None of the digimon made very good leaders, except maybe the more human-like evil digimon they seemed to encounter on a regular basis. Seeing Patamon anyting other than his happy-go-lucky self easily made you think he was possessed.
Author's Notes: Okay, who expected any of that? Very few people, I'm guessing. Don't worry, they'll be plenty of romance in the near future, I just want it to have a worthy build-up.