"It's summer vacation."
"I know, Taichi."
"Yet here we are at school."
"I know, Taichi."
"Tch. I never should have run for president. Seriously, we have to be here to do all this work. I'm such an idiot."
"Oh, believe me, I know, Taichi."
"...You're not supposed to agree with me. You're supposed to tell me how awesome I am and that I'm a great leader and all that. You know, cheer me up."
"You've got the wrong person. Go to Mimi if you want that kind of crap."
"But..."
"Shut up and do your work, Taichi, so we can get out of here. And don't give me that look. I've called you worse things before."
"True enough."
"…"
"…"
"Hey. I have an idea."
"As long as it doesn't involve me breaking my arm again."
-Taichi and Yamato, at the Student Council Room, after three hours of paperwork in the heart of summer vacation
"I want to go camping."
"No."
"Absolutely not."
"I broke my arm the last time we did that."
Taichi frowned at Yamato. "It was a hairline fracture, and you're perfectly fine now." Then he looked at Sora and Koushiro, the other two that had shot down his request. "And you didn't even allow me to finish."
Sora looked her leader square in the eye. "Every time I have gone camping where you were present it has ended in disaster." She folded her arms across her chest. "Excuse me if I believe fate to be telling me something."
Taichi raised his eyebrow at her. "And what would that be exactly?"
"Obviously, don't go camping with Taichi Yagami."
Taichi looked over at Koushiro. The younger boy gave a small shrug. "I just don't like camping. I hardly wanted to go the first time. Don't get me wrong. I wouldn't trade meeting Tentomon for anything but I prefer other entertainment beside outdoor recreation."
Taichi huffed. "Fine. What about a hot springs?" When Sora opened her mouth, Taichi quickly added, "And don't bring up Devimon. That was one time years ago. Get over it." Sora snapped her mouth shut and turned away with a frown creasing her brow.
Miyako raised her hand. She asked, "You want all of us to go to a hot springs together?"
Rubbing the back of his head, Taichi gave a sheepish laugh. "I was more thinking of inviting the whole student body actually," he admitted.
Dead silence met his statement. His friends stared at him with various levels of incredulousness. He personally felt this was unwarranted.
Yamato leaned forward, resting his forehead on his hand which hid his eyes. A heavy sigh escaped from him before he spoke. "You've already planned it all, haven't you?"
Taichi couldn't help but let a grin form on his face. His friend knew him so well. "You could say that." He wasn't quite willing to admit to everything yet. Though he doubted it would take Yamato much longer to piece the rest of it together.
"Invitations?"
"Sent them last week."
"Permission slips?"
"Collected in this folder."
"Money?"
"Turned into the principal this morning."
"And us?"
"Taken care of. I took the liberty of talking to your parents myself."
"Of course you did."
Sora interjected, "Let me get this straight. You booked a hot springs vacation for the entire student body without consulting us because you knew we wouldn't want to go camping with you?"
Taichi mulled Sora's sentence over in his mind. After a few moments, he nodded his head. "That about sums it up, yep."
After another beat of silence, Yamato said, "Sometimes, Taichi, I don't know if you're brilliant or completely off your rocker. So, when is this trip?"
"Right now actually. The buses are waiting outside. I fabricated this entire meeting to get you here."
"I hope you had the foresight to pack our belongings for us," Koushiro said. He was already packing up his things like he was getting ready to leave.
He tilted his head as he answered, "Well, not personally, but yeah those have probably arrived as well."
"Probably?" Sora asked with a raised eyebrow of her own.
"Well, I put Hikari, Takeru, and Jyou in charge of gathering them up, so yeah, probably."
Yamato came to his feet. "Alright then. Let's go."
"Wait. Are you serious? We're all just going along with this?" Miyako demanded.
"Well, I suppose we all could use a vacation," Sora said, biting her bottom lip between her teeth.
Taichi smirked, "I knew you'd all see it my way."
To his dying day, Taichi would deny all blame for what happened.
"I blame you," Yamato said as he stared at the crater and splintered remains in front of him. They were once the rather nice accommodations Taichi had somehow managed to wrangle for their group. He completely ignored the screams and chaos still occurring behind them.
Taichi folded his arms across his chest. "I don't see how you can. Koushiro said himself that it was a random fluke. Gennai confirmed that it has never happened before and not likely to ever happen again."
"Yeah, well, what he calls a fluke, I call karma," Yamato shot back. "Somewhere, in the karmatic universe, this is your fault. I'm sure of it. Why else would this 'random fluke'," he started, holding up his fingers to make the quotation mark gesture with them. He continued, "-happen at the exact place where we all just so happen to be?"
"That's actually a really good question." Taichi rubbed his chin in thought. He shrugged as he drop his arms back to his side. "I'm still denying that I had anything to do with this."
There was an exasperated tut from beside them. "Not to interrupt but shouldn't we go help?" Sora interjected. She wasn't looking at the destruction Yamato was. Instead, she watched what was going on behind the two boys.
"Nah," Taichi dismissed as he turned away from the destruction to watch the battle on the other side of the property. "It's only Kawagumon. The kids will take care of him in a minute." He frowned and folded his arms across his chest. "That guy's like a bad penny."
Another second later, Yamato turned in the same direction as the other two. In silence, the three friends watched as Aquilamon and Kabuterimon battled Kawagumon in the sky. As Taichi predicted, less than a minute later, all three Digimon disappeared in a beam of light, no doubt from Koushiro's computer. For another few seconds, they stood there in silence.
Taichi unfolded his arms and stepped forward. "Well, I guess we'd better make sure no one's died."
Two hours later, everyone was accounted for and set on the bus on their way home. There hadn't been any injuries beyond scraps and bruises. The Digidestined watched, standing in a line, as the buses rolled out of the resort back to the city.
"All in all, I think that turned out pretty well."
All eyes turned to their leader in disbelief. Kawagumon had done a fair amount of damage before he was sent back to the Digital World. While it was certain that a random attack from a Digimon was not planned by Taichi, it had happened. 'Turned out pretty well' was not the way any of them would put it.
"What?" Taichi defended putting his hands in the air. "I mean, at least it happened at the end of the vacation. We were about the pack up and head home anyway. No one got seriously hurt and it was only Kawagumon. Given our track record, it could have been worse." The Digidestined exchanged glances with each other. There was some reluctant agreement to each other with their eyes and expressions. Their leader did have a point, after all.
Yamato started to laugh. He slapped his hand onto Taichi's shoulder. "At least life with you is never boring, Taichi."
A pink rolling suitcase came to a stop next to small feet adorned by pink flip-flops. Fingers, with fingernails meticulously manicured, ran through light brown hair with just a hint of orange to it, pushing the strands back from pale rosy cheeks. Edges of full pretty lips curled upward as brown eyes took in the scene around them. She had come back. After all this time, she was finally home.
"Mimi, dear, are you coming?"
Taking a moment to straighten her white shirt and smooth down her pink ruffled skirt, Mimi Tachikawa gripped the handle of her rolling suitcase again. "Coming, Dad," she called out and followed her parents out of the airport, once again on the soil of the country of Japan.
She couldn't wait to spring the surprise on the others.