Disclaimer: I don't own Kenshin, Kaoru, or anyone else in Rurouni Kenshin.
Notes: Okay. Chapter one up. The part that's been done, only I hope it's a tad bit different. I will note that I'm not so good at that make-a-person-burst-out-laughing kind of humor, but maybe the concept will be amusing.
Calger459: Thanks for the word. As you will see, I made use of it in this chapter.
1. An argument
Manic laughter rose into the darkness, above the din of endless chatter. Most of the babble was incoherent, but here and there, words could be heard.
"Did you hear?"
"Can we? Can we?"
"No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No!"
"Shut up! Yes!"
"I don't know."
"You heard what he said."
"Is it right?"
"Who cares?"
"A switch?"
"No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No!"
"Someone get him to shut up. Yes!"
"No switch."
"Switch! Switch!"
"No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No!"
"SHUT UP!"
"NO!"
"SWITCH!"
"No!"
"Switch!"
"No!" "Switch!" "No!" "Switch!" "No!!!/Switch!!!"
^_^
Kenshin jerked awake, a startled gasp on his lips. He laid on his back, staring at the ceiling, his chest heaving as he recovered from what had to be the strangest dream he ever recalled having.
"Hmmm... Kenshin?" Kaoru's voice was hoarse and low with sleep.
Sighing softly, Kenshin turned his head to look at her. He felt vaguely ill, but whether that was from the dream or some other reason, he was not yet certain. Blue eyes blinked at him hazily, and he smiled.
"Just a dream, Koishii," he murmured. "Go back to sleep."
"Another nightmare?" she frowned, suddenly alert.
He shook his head, turning his eyes to stare blankly at the ceiling.
"No..." he sighed. "Just a strange dream. I'll tell you about it in the morning."
Rolling over, he climbed out of bed and reached for his haori. Sluggishly pulling it on, he ambled for the door. Kaoru lifted her voice behind him.
"Where are you going?"
"To the bathroom, Kaoru," Kenshin smiled over his shoulder at her.
"Oh."
With another sigh, Kenshin closed the door behind him. He felt odd, to put it mildly. Running a hand through his loose hair, he wondered absently how it had worked free of its binding. Certainly he had not been thrashing around enough for that to happen. If he had been, Kaoru would have woken him. The red hair was heavy on his shoulders, and he pushed it back impatiently as he made his way to the backhouse.
The hair wasn't the only thing that bothered him. He felt off balance, unsteady, as if he was carrying something. But his hands were empty. And damned if the backhouse door did not seem just a little larger than usual.
That was not including how sick he felt. If he had not known Kaoru was only getting sick from her pregnancy, he would have guessed he had caught whatever had made her ill. Now, as he emptied the meager contents of his stomach, he wished that was the case. That would save him from a trip to the doctor.
Wiping the cold sweat from his eyes, Kenshin sat back and let his chin drop to his chest, recovering. The sick feeling was not gone, but there was nothing left in his stomach to throw up. He would have to suffer the nausea until he could get checked up. Normally that would not have appealed to him; he did everything he could to avoid the doctor usually. But Kaoru was pregnant, and he would not risk getting her ill.
Kenshin frowned. In this position, from that vantage point, he noticed something that he had felt before, but had ignored.
Back in the house, Kaoru was torn from her light doze by the sound of Kenshin's sharp yell. She sat straight up, looking around wildly.
"KAORU!"
The stark panic in that shout had Kaoru out of bed in an instant and running for the backhouse. She burst through the door without a thought to Kenshin's privacy.
She found him standing unsteadily in the middle of the small room, arms thrown out as if for balance. His hair tumbled around his shoulders crazily, obscuring his face in shadows. But the instant she entered, his head snapped up, and he let out a soft gasp.
"Kaoru!" It was much weaker than the shout from before, filled with more than a little alarm.
"Kenshin, what's wrong?!" Kaoru moved forward to hold him but was stopped by two hands against her chest. She blinked, her eyes going wide. That felt very wrong. She looked down.
Kaoru let out a muffled shriek, her hand pressed tightly to her mouth to keep from screaming outright. Kenshin jerked his hands back, also afraid of what he had felt. Kaoru's chest was flat. She was not overly endowed before, but now... there was nothing. It was just flat. Like Kenshin's should have been. But when Kaoru looked, she noticed that what she was missing, Kenshin had.
"Y-y-your chest!" she managed to blurt.
Kenshin was obviously trying not to hyperventilate. His violet eyes were wide, the rest of his face too pale in the moonlight. Kaoru noticed something else then as well. She reached forward and touched his left cheek, smooth and perfect.
"Your scar!"
His hand flew to his face, following her fingers in the tracing of the nonexistent scar.
"It's gone," Kenshin murmured dumbly. He looked at her, stricken. "Kaoru, this is impossible!"
"I don't understand how it could just disappear like that either," she murmured sympathetically.
"Not the scar, Kaoru!" Kenshin grabbed her arms, shaking her lightly. "The rest of it! I'm a-a-... a woman! And you!"
"A man," she flushed in realization. While she felt the loss of her breasts, there was something that had not been there before. Kenshin, she assumed, was lacking what made him a man now. "Kenshin, what do we do?"
"Uh..."
"Don't tell me you don't know what to do?!" Kaoru looked to be on the verge of tears. Kenshin did not want that. He would not have been crying if he was still the man of the family. Something must have been wrong with this female body because he felt tears flooding to his own eyes. If Kaoru started crying, he knew he would never be able to contain them. He did something that was very unlike him: he threw a small temper tantrum.
"Do I look like I have any idea what's going on?!" he burst out. Yes, something was definitely wrong with him. He hugged himself, then quickly threw his arms out, away from the unfamiliar body. "This sort of thing doesn't happen every day! How should I know what to do?!"
"Ahem." An unfamiliar voice broke into their argument, and Kenshin and Kaoru ground to an abrupt halt, looking around in confusion.
"Mou!" Kaoru scowled. There was no one around.
"Oro..." Kenshin hastily swiped away the tears that had accumulated in his eyes. He could not see anyone either.
"That's better." The voice was pleasant, neither too high nor too deep. It was one a person could hear dozens of times and forget a moment later. Unremarkable, average, and easily tolerated.
"Who's there?!" Kaoru demanded. For the first time since she (or he, if one wanted to go into technicalities) had joined Kenshin outside, Kenshin noticed how her voice had changed. It was not much different, but after having heard her almost every day for the past two years, he could pick out the distinct deepening of her pitch. Still Kaoru but with a definite masculinity to the sound. He was not certain he liked it at all. And it made him wonder: had his voice changed as well? Like he didn't sound feminine enough to begin with!
"Calm down, both of you, please. You can't see me, and you won't ever see me."
"Why not?" Kenshin asked cautiously, feeling silly talking to the air.
"Just because."
"That's not a reason!" Kaoru growled. Kenshin startled. He really was disconcerted by the change in her voice. It took quite a bit of will power not to ask her to stop talking.
"It is if I say it is."
"Mou!"
"It seems that you two have gotten yourselves into yet another predicament."
"We didn't do anything!" Kaoru protested.
"Actually, it was your husband's words that started this. He said he would take your place if he could, and it appears that he has."
"Oro!"
"Could you explain that so normal people can understand?"
"Certainly. An accident occurred. Some of the others wanted to make you two switch bodies so that Kenshin would be in Kaoru's body while Kaoru would be in Kenshin's body."
"This is still my own body," Kaoru pointed out, then blushed. "Sort of."
"That would be the accident part. We got into a little argument, you see-"
"Some argument got us into this?! Why you litt-mmmmph!"
Kenshin smiled anxiously, one hand clamped tightly over Kaoru's mouth. He was also slightly disturbed by how much shorter he was. At least, he was shorter than Kaoru. He had never had to reach up that far before to get to her face.
"Please continue," he requested.
"...Right. We had an argument. Half of the group was trying to make the switch while the other half tried to prevent it. So, we have this little mix up. Now, Kenshin is female while Kaoru is male. And somehow, in the mix of things, the baby made it safely from Kaoru's body to Kenshin's."
"That's good, right?" Kenshin frowned uneasily. He glanced down at his stomach. A baby? In him?
"Very good. If the baby had remained in Kaoru's body, it would have been rejected and absorbed into her. A man simply cannot carry a child."
"Gah!" Kaoru pushed Kenshin's hand away finally and glared into the empty room. "So fix this already! Turn us back to normal!"
"It's not that easy. If it had been a simple switch of minds, I could do it. But your physiologies have been completely altered, not to mention the transfer of the child."
"What are you saying?" Kenshin asked.
"Unless you're willing to sacrifice your first child, there is no way to change you back."
"WHAT?!"
"NO!"
"Like I said... until the baby is born, you will have to remain as you are."
"B-b-but!" Kaoru stuttered, shaking her head in denial. "What are we supposed to do until then? I can't go into town like this!"
"I'm going to carry a baby to term?" Kenshin asked softly.
"I'll let you two sort things out. I'll see you in nine months."
"Wait-"
"Don't-"
Kaoru and Kenshin stared at each other. Neither one knew what to say. Finally Kenshin broke the silence.
"We'll have to tell our friends," he pointed out hesitantly.
Kaoru grumbled under her breath and agreed with a heavy sigh.
"We'll talk to them tomorrow," she decided. "I'm still tired, and you look terrible."
"I feel awful," he admitted.
"Do you think you're sick?" Kaoru asked worriedly, reaching to touch his forehead.
"I think it's because I'm the one with a baby in me now instead of you," Kenshin replied, looking down at his stomach again. Kaoru's anxious gaze softened at the uncertain gleam in his eyes. She had not even gotten used to the thought of being pregnant, and now she wasn't. Kenshin was. How strange was that?
"Megumi-san gave me some tea that's supposed to help the sickness," Kaoru said gently. "Want me to make some for you?"
He nodded, smiling gratefully as Kaoru, now the taller of the two, guided him out of the backhouse and toward the kitchen.
"You're going to have to have a talk with Megumi-san," Kaoru continued as she set some water to boil.
"Megumi-san?" Kenshin echoed distantly. He was still busy staring at his stomach, his fingers splayed across his flat belly as if he could feel it already.
"Sure," Kaoru smiled brightly at him. "Have you ever had a child before?"
"N-no!"
"Then you'll have to speak with Megumi-san," Kaoru grinned as she pictured Kenshin, blushing and stuttering to the lady doctor. "She'll tell you everything you need to know."
"You seem to be comfortable with this," Kenshin grumbled, leaning against the wall wearily. He sank down to sit on the floor and glared at Kaoru halfheartedly.
"I don't know," Kaoru grinned, pouring the hot water into a cup. "I could get used to it. No kimonos for nine months. No monthly cycles. No being called busu by Yahiko..."
Kenshin caught on the kimono part. His face fell.
"A kimono?"
"You'll look lovely in my blue and purple kimono," Kaoru smirked. "It'll bring out the color of your eyes."
Kenshin snatched the tea out of Kaoru's hands and sipped it quickly. He had just found another reason, besides the pregnancy, to feel ill.
More notes: Poor Kenshin and Kaoru. Let's see what kind of torture we can put them through. To prevent my own confusion, I still use the word 'she' for Kaoru and 'he' for Kenshin. If this is confusing or detracts from the story, I apologize, but it should be fairly clear as to who is the character in question. I hope you're anticipating the next chapter: Chapter 2. Check up.