Hey, look, another chapter! Apparently I follow through on stuff sometimes. Anyway, this one takes place early in the series (pre-Rukia's abduction) and features Ichigo and Rukia. Have fun.

(Still don't own Bleach)

Chapter 2: Chappy

To say that Ichigo Kurosaki was screwed would be a drastic understatement.

'Completely and hopelessly screwed beyond any level of screwage he has ever been or will ever be' would be a far more accurate way to put it.

This was the thought racing through Ichigo's brain as he tore his bedroom apart.

"Rukia's gonna beat the crap out of me!" He literally ripped the door off of his own closet, revealing the makeshift sleeping quarters of his pseudo-roommate, the petite raven-haired shinigami and object of his current distress. He cursed aloud as he plunged into her few belongings, flinging them haphazardly all over the place as he searched for a specific item.

"She HAS to have another one! If she gets back before I find it..... she'll kill me!"

Having thoroughly rifled through every item on the closet's lower shelf (the 'bed' shelf), he quickly reached up to give the upper shelf a similar treatment, but hissed in pain as his arms snapped abruptly to the end of their length a good foot short of their goal. Normally, the tall and lanky teen would have no trouble reaching anything in his own closet, but these circumstances were nowhere near normal. His current height (well under 5 feet) was a far cry from his usual stature. His distinctive messy orange hair was gone, replaced by neatly-cut shoulder length black tresses. His boy-parts were now girl-parts.

Ichigo looked exactly like Rukia Kuchiki.

[15 minutes earlier...]

Homework, Ichigo decided, was the most absolutely boring task ever conceived by man. They could use it as torture in prisons. That way, prisoners could learn AND stop being criminals. And if people decide that it's inhumane, then they'd have to stop making kids do it too. Either way, somebody wins. Usually, Ichigo didn't have such a tendency to drift away on the train of thought, but he wasn't usually this bored. "And if it isn't hard enough to concentrate," he grumbled as he slouched at his desk, scribbling tediously away at a math worksheet, "I have to deal with the creepy blank stare of that gigai too."

He had no way to prove it, but Ichigo was growing increasingly certain that Rukia had intentionally propped her human shell up on his bed to face him like a weird little mannequin before jumping out the window to 'escape the land of boring' as she had so eloquently put it. It was something she'd do, the little brat was always finding ways to piss him off. As Ichigo glared at Rukia's empty body, his train of thought began to detour again.

He never thought much about it, but a lot of the technology Rukia had access to was downright amazing. Sure, no one in Soul Society thought twice about gigais, but on Earth the ability to slip into a false body as easily as slipping on a coat was strictly science fiction. He'd never mention it aloud, but Ichigo always wondered what it was like to be in one. Deciding he deserved a break from studying, Ichigo slid back in his chair with a grin. There was certainly one way to find out.

He stretched and rose from his seat, feigning disinterest as he walked over to his bed and took a sideways look at the body. Nobody was around to see him (except for that blank-eyed Rukia face), but he maintained a guarded expression simply because.... well, it was a weird idea. A stupid one, too, for that matter. But..... his sisters and father were out on a house call, and Rukia probably wouldn't be back for half an hour at least. He could try it, and no one would ever have to know. Ichigo took one cautionary glance at the door, closed the curtains around his window, and took a deep breath. And then proceeded to make the biggest mistake of his life.

Ichigo had to stop digging when he realized he was on the verge of tearing out his own drywall. He stepped out of the closet, breathing heavily, and willed himself to calm down. He was obviously getting nowhere. There was a way to fix this situation, he just needed to think. As far as he knew, there were two ways out of a gigai: that glove Rukia was always braining him with, and those weird 'soul candy' pills she carried around. At first, he had tried to use the glove to leave his own body, but couldn't quite get it to work, so he had simply swallowed one of her soul candies. It was easy enough to then walk into the gigai in his spirit form, but what he didn't count on was his body suddenly reanimating, bolting up with a sudden "PYON!" and jumping out the window and into the night. While wearing the glove one one hand and holding the soul candy in the other. Ichigo was now certain that Rukia didn't have a spare of either, or he would have found them by now. He needed a way out of the gigai quick, before Rukia came back and decided to use the third method – death.

Suddenly, he had a flash of inspiration. Urahara, that creepy old shopkeeper, probably had loads of stuff for situations like this. It would be embarrassing, but at least there probably wouldn't be any violence. He made a dash for the window, seeing his salvation in front of him, and with a sharp crack he met Rukia with a brutal headbutt.

"Ow, damn it!" Rukia staggered into the room, rubbing her face. "What the hell..... Chappy?"

Ichigo sat frozen against the wall where he fell, feeling panic flood back into his mind.

"What are you doing in my gigai, Chappy? I know for a fact that I didn't use you." Rukia's eyes narrowed as she looked around. "What happened in here, and where's Ichigo?"

Ichigo saw his life flash before his eyes. He was as good as busted. Cornered, as a last resort, he suddenly had a very, very dumb idea.

"Ummm.... Ichigo.... h..h..he knocked over the.. uh... walls and stuff.... by accident. And he went out to.... get the stuff to fix them," Ichigo managed in his best Rukia voice. "He uh... woke me up because.... ah... so I could tell you where he went!"

It felt like hours were going by as Rukia's judging stare burned into him, and just as Ichigo was about to crumble, admit everything, and apologize as hard as humanly possible, Rukia broke eye contact, crossed her arms and huffed in annoyance.

"What a moron," she groused. "Hasn't he heard of leaving a note?"

Having averted the immediate threat, Ichigo sighed in relief, but was immediately shocked back into terror again as Rukia knelt down close in front of him. Very close. Way too close.

"Hey, are you all right? You're acting kind of weird."

"Y...yeah, I guess. No problems, really," Ichigo stammered. Then as an afterthought, "p...pyon."

"No, you're definitely acting weird," Rukia said, beginning to grow concerned. She placed her hands on either side of his head, tilting it back to look up his nose. "If that idiot Urahara sold me a defective product again, I'm going to throw him into traffic."

Ichigo gritted his teeth as she examined his face, frantically trying not to lose control as she poked his eyes, nose, ears and mouth. When she abruptly yanked up his shirt, he hit his limit.

"WHOA!" he screamed, jumping to his feet. "WHAT the....."

His voice trailed off as he stared past Rukia at his window. His eyes grew wide and his stomach dropped down to his ankles as he watched his truant body hop from the sill and plop onto the bed, open its mouth with an amused expression and utter one wretched word.

"Pyon!"

Rukia's face went through a rainbow of emotions. Surprise at her gigai's outburst, then confusion at Ichigo's bizarre entrance and behavior, and finally suspicion, comprehension, shock, anger and rage as she realized what was going on. Ichigo watched each of these with growing horror, but still didn't manage to see the attack coming.

A flash, the whistle of steel slicing through air and suddenly he's on the ground, hands clasped around a bleeding throat.

"Rukia, stop!" he coughed, "I can explain!"

"The hell you will," she snarled, flicking blood from the letter opener that was on his desk not two seconds ago. "I'm going to cut you until you come out of there, and then I'm going to cut your soul until you're sorry for what you did."

"N... now come on. Just calm down a little..."

"And THEN," Rukia's spiritual energy exploded around her as her anger reached a peak, "I'm going to MURDER YOU, ICHIGO!"

He barely managed to roll to the side as her next strike cleaved a crater into his floor,and scrambled madly to jump out the window. He hit the ground running, his fight-or-flight instincts stuck on full throttle flight as he tore off down the street, followed closely by the demon that was once Rukia and the bouncing blockhead rabbit that was once Ichigo.