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Ow…' Ichigo regained consciousness, expecting a huge pain in his nose. Miraculously, nothing came. Instead, he rubbed his throbbing head. His hair seemed to have grown longer and it stuck to the back of his neck. He opened his eyes and closed them almost immediately. He had seen the last thing that anybody would look forward to seeing just after having escaped death - the hideously ugly and weird face of Captain Mayuri Kurotsuchi centimetres away from his.

Kurotsuchi tilted his head 190 degrees sideways and began to laugh his hideously weird and ugly laugh.

'Wu ku ku ku ku ku. Wu ku ku ku ku ku . . . .'

Still keeping his eyes closed, Ichigo waited patiently for him to stop yapping...er, he meant stop laughing.

'I suggest you to open your organal windows of vision and look to your starboard side.' Said Kurotsuchi in his nasal voice.

(For those utter idiots who can't understand what he said, in simple words he asked Ichigo to open his eyes and look towards his right.)

Ichigo, as Kurotsuchi put it "opened his organal windows of vision" and "looked towards his starboard side."

To his utter disbelief, he saw himself sprawled on the ground. He immediately jumped to his feet and faced Kurotsuchi. The Captain seemed to have grown taller since they had last met.

'What the hell have you done to me, you as— ' Rukia said.

'Huh?' Ichigo was sure that he had just said that. 'You mean he cloned you-'

Ichigo stopped short. He had mouthed the words, but in Rukia's voice.

Hey wait a minute!

His hair had grown longer.

His own body was lying beside him.

Kurotsuchi seemed taller than usual.

He spoke in Rukia's voice.

Desperately wishing he was wrong, Ichigo reached over his shoulder for his zanpakuto. His fingers closed over thin air. Sode no Shirayuki, Rukia's zanpakuto, was slung at his hip. Ichigo unsheathed it and looked at his reflection on the blade. Rukia's dark irises stared back at him.

Disbelievingly, he felt up and down his self with his other hand, without taking his/Rukia's eyes off the reflection.

Something abnormal was stuck on his chest. More like tumor or something.

His hand stopped groping and Sode no Shirayuki clattered on to the floor.

Silence. And then—

'WHAT?'

Overhead, a couple of birds nesting on the roof cawed, irritated as the whole tower shook.


When Rukia woke up, her reactions were more or less the same. However, her tone with the Captain was a lot more respectful.

'With all due respect, Captain,' she said, 'you are an over-impulsive fool who does not know when and where to draw the line between scientific fantasy and reality. To be completely honest with you, sir, I feel the utmost urge to slice off your one and only hideously ugly and weird fingernail and shove it up your hideously weird and ugly nose. I must thank you for giving me the absolutely wonderful opportunity to spend the rest of my life, which I would have dedicated to pursuing my dream of becoming a highly decorated officer had this not happened, in a smelly teenager's hormonally imbalanced body.' She said it all in one breath, her pitch increasing with each syllable.

'Feeling's mutual.' Muttered Ichigo. 'It's not like I wanna spend the rest of m'life in a puny person's body who has been gifted with the artistic talent of a brain-dead pig.'

'What did you say, you spineless moron?'

'Just what you heard, bitch.'

This squabble continued.

Kurotsuchi straightened his neck (which was still bent at an angle impossible for any normal human or soul to achieve) with a creaking noise.

'Calm down, inferior people. I can reverse this.'

Ichigo and Rukia obeyed him, for once, and calmed down, and stared at him with so much reverence, as if he was the holiest man in the Soul Society.

Kurotsuchi simply let his head hang back and stared up. Ichigo looked to see what he was looking at, but it turned out to be the highly uninteresting ceiling, and so he forced himself to look at the Captain's jutting out chin.

'What did you say, sir?' asked Rukia.

'Please get your hearing organs checked, Kuchiki.'

Yeah. And you get your brain checked. Hat and clogs must've been a better captain than you, thought Ichigo.

'Anyway, I need your cooperation. Nobody must come to know of this incident.'

'Why?' demanded Rukia.

'Because, my dear Kuchiki,' Rukia shuddered in repulsion, 'if you let anybody know, then you, along with both Kurosaki and me will be in deep trouble. When I say deep, I mean as deep as the Indian Ocean. You made an un-notified and illegal trip to the world of the living. Kurosaki is an illegal immigrant here. And I, Captain Mayuri Kurotsuchi am responsible for your – ah – condition.'

'How much time do you need?' spat Ichigo.

'Give me one and a half days.'

'One and a half days?' Ichigo moved forward to shake that annoying creep by the shoulder. Rukia restrained him with a touch on his (or her, actually)shoulder.

'Let him do it. Meanwhile...'


Guys and gals, thanks a lot for coming this far with me. Really appreciate it. Next chapter-And I thought my life sucked as it was.

Byakuya's appearance.