Chapter 2 is here! Sorry for the slow update! Hopefully this chapter will be better than the last!

Disclaimer: I do not own Bleach! The awesome Tite Kubo does!

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Get Out Of My Head!

:: Chapter 2 - Renji Awakens! ::

The threshold between dreams and reality…

Abarai Renji woke up with a splitting headache.

Damn… I don't recall partying last night…

He was just about to massage his sore temples when he realised with a start that a blade was being swung towards him.

Holy crap!

Alarmed, he quickly leaped backwards, the sword's edge narrowly missing him by a hair's breadth.

Nausea rose within him from the sudden action, but before he got a chance to regain his balance, an energy arrow came tearing towards him.

Shit!

He could not dodge it. He felt the arrow's impact to his back, searing into his skin like an icy fire. Renji fell over, placing his hands forward to prevent his body from crashing onto the ground. He could hear hurried footsteps approaching him as he tried to catch his breath.

What the heck is happening!? He yelled inwardly.

"Renji?" A voice sounded in his head. Renji was rather surprised. That sounded like his captain!

"Oi! Byakuya! You okay?"

Renji looked up. Ichigo was standing before him, hand clasped over the hilt of Zangetsu which he casually swung over his back.

"Ichigo!" came Renji's surprised reply. "Why the hell did you attack me for?"

Now it was Ichigo's turn to look surprised.

"Eh? Didn't you want us to train you? So that you could get use to combat in this body?" Ichigo glanced questioningly at the rest of the party. Renji saw Chad with his huge arm armour on, Orihime with Tsubaki released beside her and Uryu with his Quincy bow activated.

Oh… so he was the one who shot me! I'm so gonna give him a payback later! Renji grumbled to himself, flinching slightly from the sting of the wound.

The hauntingly familiar voice went off in his mind once more. "How foolish…"

Renji grimaced. That was definitely his captain's voice in his head.

Damn! He thought. I really must have drunk myself crazy last night…

Renji did talk to himself occasionally. Most of the time he visualised himself speaking to Zabimaru. Sometimes when he was rather peeved he would find himself speaking to Ichigo in his head, hurling abuses and having a good quarrel with the orange-head that would make him feel slightly better. And rarely did he imagine himself speaking to his captain. It was only on those rare occasions, where he found himself rather unmotivated and yet filled with desire and responsibility to get something done with, would he pretend that his captain was chiding him with his cold, harsh words.

"How immature…" The Byakuya voice in his head started.

"Nobody asked you for your opinion anyway!" Renji shot back, rather annoyed. His head throbbed and his back was burning from the arrow blow. He had woken up in the middle of goodness know where... under attack! Of course he was feeling irritated!

As if I'm not feeling annoyed myself… Renji heard his inner Byakuya think to himself.

"I'm more annoyed than you are, idiot!" Renji snapped at him.

Even though his eyes were not closed, he could faintly visualize the image of his captain at the back of his head. He looked at him with startled eyes.

"You can hear my thoughts?"

Renji was exasperated. "What kind of stupid question is that? Of course I can hear your thoughts! You're my damn annoying conscious for goodness sake!"

His inner Byakuya grew visibly annoyed and Renji heard his infuriated thoughts slash through his mind: That fool! How dare he!

"Where are your manners!" His 'captain' chided him crossly.

Shut up!

"Eh, Byakuya, seriously are you alright?" Ichigo's voice broke through his inner conversation.

"Perhaps I've put too much force into my blow…" Uryuu started, pushing his glasses up his nose with a glint in his eye. Renji could not tell if he was being apologetic, or was simply praising himself.

"Kuchiki-san, are you okay?" Orihime's concerned voice drifted over him.

Then did Renji realise how everyone was addressing him.

"Argh! What's wrong with all of you? I'm Renji!"

Everyone before him seemed befuddled.

"Huh?" Ichigo scratched his head.

Urahara stood laughing at a side. "Oh-hoh! Looks like Abarai-kun is back!"

Ichigo gave him a weird look and asked, "You're Renji?"

Renji was exasperated. "Yes! I'm Renji! Soul Reaper of the Gotei 13, Lieutenant of the 6th Division!"

Ichigo's face paled.

"Renji… you might want to take a look at this…"

Renji gulped nervously when Ichigo took out a hand mirror, setting off a succession of disturbing thoughts along with the alarm bells in his head.

Oh my god. Don't tell me that I'm in Taichou's….

Hand trembling, Renji squeezed his eyes shut and reached out for the mirror. He closed his fingers around the grip of the mirror and drew it closer to him hesitantly.

Then slowly, slowly, he opened his eyes and looked into the mirror.

He heard Ichigo burst out into wild laughter.

"Damn you!" Renji yelled and threw the mirror straight smack into Ichigo's face, feeling his face heat up with embarrassment. "You scared me there! There's nothing wrong with me, you moron!"

"Sorry, I couldn't help it." The idiot strawberry chuckled, taking in deep gulps of air in an attempt to suppress his cachinnation. "But man! You should have seen the look on your face!"

With that, the orange-head found himself caught in a fit of laughter once more.

"Shut up!"

"Renji, you're too ignorant of the situation…" he heard Byakuya sigh in his head.

"You shut up too!"

"Do not be disrespectful, Abarai Renji!"

"Just shut up already!"

Renji felt as if his head was about to explode. If this wasn't hell then he did not know what it was.

Why me!?

Far away in a distant dimension, a certain Shinigami awoke. Her body felt stiff from lying in the same position for a long period of time.

What happened?

She vaguely remembered some shouting… raging emotions… something about… a marriage?

Then she remembered.

Her brother had said cruel words. And she remembered with a pang of guilt that she too had spoken to him harshly.

She had been running, and then everything went black.

So what was it about shouting that she had faintly recalled? She could have sworn that it was Ichigo shouting her name.

If all that had happened, then why was she now snugly tucked in a huge comfy bed?

Where was she?

In the darkness, she could not quite make out the details of her surroundings, but she could tell that the room was huge and generously furnished. Surely, she could not be in the care of the 4th Division?

Unsure of what to do, she lay still under the covers until her patience wore away with every ticking minute. She was about to get up from the bed when she heard approaching footsteps.

Someone was coming!

Hastily sitting up, she searched for her Zanpakutou but it was nowhere to be found. Suddenly, light flooded the dark room and the Shinigami had to blink her eyes several times before they grew accustomed to the light. With a clear vision, she was startled by the vastness of the room and how foreign it felt.

"Hey Rukia! Are you feeling better?"

The Shinigami's heart skipped a beat.

"Renji?"

Kuchiki Rukia felt immense relieve flood into her upon seeing her favourite red-head. She always felt safe in the presence of Renji.

"Yeah." She felt her face heat up a little as Renji smiled at her. He clasped his rough hands over hers. "Everything will be alright, Rukia. I know what happened between you and your brother."

"Where are we?" She asked, trying hard not to stammer as the red-head leaned in closer to her.

"I hope you don't mind… but I've ran away from Soul Society with you…" He raised his eyes to meet hers. "So that we can always be together."

Rukia felt a rousing warmth in her heart as she stared into the deep ruby eyes of the man before her.

"Renji…"

"We are free to live a life of our own. No more rules. No more laws."

Rukia felt Renji's calloused hands leave hers. She looked up to see Renji with his arms wide open, inviting her into his embrace.

"I'll protect you. I won't let Byakuya take you away."

Rukia was speechless. Speechless with joy.

Here she was, free from the chains of fate that bounded her to a forced destiny. And with her was the man who had stolen her heart.

Without a moment's hesitation, she threw herself into the embrace of the larger man, tears of elation running down her cheeks.

Was this a dream? If it was, she wished that it would never end.

She felt Renji's strong arms wrap around her protectively.

"Renji… I-I…"

"Shush…" Renji pulled away so that their eyes could meet once more. "I love you, Rukia."

Rukia could not remember what really happened next. All she could recall was the elation, the passion, and the feeling of soft lips against hers.

After much effort, Kisuke Urahara managed to gather the entire group to settle down into a semicircle with him seated comfortably at the center.

"Now, now. I'm sure Abarai-kun has gone through a lot today and Kurosaki-kun has had his share of fun. Let me brief everyone on our current situation and spare Abarai-kun from some of his misery, okay?"

Everyone dully nodded their head in agreement. It was time to get serious. There were matters to be sorted, and Rukia had to be found.

Renji, however, was not paying attention to the store manager at all. He was instead more engrossed in trying to rid his head of a very annoying captain.

This was the first time Renji ever had this much of a problem over the control of his conscious. It was his mind, wasn't it? Why was it so damn hard to think about someone else besides his hell of a taichou!

"Renji. May I remind you that your thoughts are all clearly audible to me, and that it would be wise to keep the derogatory remarks out of your head." The Byakuya manifestation in his mind sounded rather peeved with his 'poor behaviour'. If Renji was not talking to a conscious in his head, then of course, he would never dare to speak to his taichou in such a manner.

Why can't he understand that I am now trapped within his mind?

"To my really pissing-me-off conscious, for your information I can hear your thoughts very clearly too."

Renji felt that his brain was working overtime. This conscious was as realistic as realism would allow.

Every time Renji thought of something, regardless of how insignificant it was, his conscious would hear it and play a very fitting replica of his taichou by ignoring it with silence. But as human nature would have it, even if words were unspoken, the mind would speak its inner thoughts.

And to Renji's utmost annoyance, he could not shut this conscious up. On normal occasions he would just converse casually with his conscious, be it about how boring filling paperwork was, what he should grab for lunch or what he should say on a date with Rukia. His mind was not that complicated to be able to handle a conscious whose thoughts were all audible to him and was able to react accordingly. It was as if this conscious had an individual mind of its own, just like Zabimaru.

To make matters worse, his conscious was now in the form of his taichou. He would not mind if that was all, for his taichou was usually silent and withheld his comments. But now, he could hear every single thought running through the mind of his conscious, which was really annoying. No matter how hard Renji tried to shut him up, or force him out of his thoughts, he could not.

That was really frustrating.

"Get out of my head!" Renji was literally shouting into his inner world.

"Your mind is hopelessly vacuous. I have already informed you that… "

"Get out!!"

Perplexed, Renji decided on a different approach on getting rid of that annoying form of his conscious.

He had read somewhere before (was it that book authored by Kurotsuchi?) that if you ever got caught in an endless cycle of a fixed nightmare, the only way to prevent the same nightmare from occurring during rest was to visualise a different ending for the nightmare before letting sleep claim you.

Yes, that method might just work!

His inner Byakuya paled visibly and Renji grinned triumphantly.

For a start, he tried to visualise himself pushing his taichou out of an exit from his mind, but his taichou did not even budge.

Then, he attempted tying a rope around his taichou and dragging him out of his mind, but his taichou merely untied the rope with that same composed façade on his face.

How did Renji know that it was a façade? The heated, indignant thoughts that came stabbing at him from his nasty conscious told him so.

Pathetic, he heard his inner Byakuya declare when he had untied the rope.

He tried prodding his taichou out with a giant finger, tried luring him out of his inner world with some extra spicy ramen, and even attempted to sweep him out with a giant wave.

All to no avail.

Renji was on his wit's ends. He then imagined his inner world to be a flat, rectangular plane to which he held the parallel edges. With that, he shook the plane with all his might, venting out all his frustration into the generation of an inner quake. Yet his taichou was stuck to the ground like glue. Terribly frustrated, Renji started to shake his inner world furiously in a haphazard manner.

His inner Byakuya was alarmed.

"Stop it! Stop it, Renji! Stop shaking the whole place!"

Renji paused and saw that his taichou was clinging desperately to the edge of his inner world. He sighed and let go off the mental image. Almost immediately, his inner world lost its rectangular plane shape and filled up the three-dimensional space in his mind once more. He was too mentally exhausted to continue sustaining such visualization.

Damn! This is really difficult! Renji groaned. Why did his conscious have to take on the form of his taichou? And why was it stuck to his head like how music could glue itself to a mind?

That was too tiring… there has to be some other way…

Then, Renji realised how thick-headed he had been. Why did he try so hard to remove his conscious from his mind, when he could have simply focused his mental energy on trying to change the form of his conscious?

If this wasn't hell, then Byakuya did not know what it was.

Define hell.

Firstly, after receiving a nasty shock that he was apparently trapped in the body of his fukutaichou, he had requested a match with his company of humans.

It was mentally exhausting, trying to coordinate the movements of Renji's limbs while keeping track of the action in the heat of battle. Renji's Zanpakutou was rather awkward to him too, being clueless as to how to release its Shikai form.

He was about to request for a change in blade when Renji suddenly woke up. This came as an unexpected surprise as he had expected Renji to be in his former body.

Being the master of the body, Renji's consciousness had forced Byakuya into his inner world.

The captain soon found himself surrounded by high jagged walls that ran along the plane of Renji's inner world like a maze. Renji's tattoo markings had been graffiti-sprayed along the lengths of the black walls in faded white. His feet stood upon brick red, gritty ground. Byakuya soon found out that he could refocus his vision to view the environment 'outside' and realised with a start that Ichigo was swinging his blade straight at the still-groggy-from-sleep Renji.

Then he heard Renji's voice pulse through the inner world like a wave.

"Damn… I don't recall partying last night…"

"Renji! In front of you!" Byakuya shouted into the empty air before him and was relieved when Renji got startled awake and dodged the incoming blade. Then he saw the Quincy release an arrow from the back. Renji noticed the arrow a moment later while trying to regain his footing and cursed loudly in his mind. Byakuya could only watch helplessly as Renji got struck and fell to the ground.

"What the heck is happening!?" He heard his fukutaichou holler in his mind.

Now that the action was over, Byakuya decided to test out his communication capabilities with the red-head.

"Renji?" He tried speaking out loud, wondering if Renji could actually hear him.

He felt a jab of surprise coming from the red-head and could hear Renji's thoughts on how 'that sounded like his captain!' He was about to inform Renji that his presence here was indeed true when that Kurosaki brat interfered and starting conversing with his fukutaichou.

Later on, Byakuya felt rather indignant when Renji regarded him as another form of his conscious. He tried explaining the situation to the red-head but was never taken seriously. His situation became much more hellish when Renji started speaking rudely to him, and when he realised that all his thoughts could be openly heard by Renji.

The meaning of hell truly did show up when Urahara started his briefing.

Instead of paying attention, that fool of a baboon had started trying to rid him from his mind!

Byakuya had watched with utmost distaste as Renji executed several pathetic moves. Still, the captain wondered what would happen to him if Renji really did force him out of his mind.

And then the apocalypse struck and his frustrated lieutenant started an earthquake in his inner world. Byakuya had been thrown off the ground by the sheer magnitude of the quake and had to grab hold onto one of the edges of the overturned plane to prevent himself from falling into the darkness below. To his utmost relief, Renji soon grew weary and the inner world reverted back to its original form.

But that was not all.

Byakuya now found himself with his hair taking on an orange hue.

"Damn you, Renji!" He cursed out loud and tried to force his hair to retain its natural black.

That bastard was trying to change his appearance!

And judging from the bright orange hair, Byakuya could guess who Renji was trying to change him to.

Soon, it became a battle of mind-power. Byakuya was struggling to maintain the image of himself while Renji had the upper hand by focusing his sight and concentration intently on the orange-headed teen who was seated across him in the real world.

The captain soon found his haori losing its saturation along with his scarf and kenseikan. Perhaps it was just his imagination but he could sense with a growing horror that his smooth black/orange hair was shortening and becoming rather stiff and edgy.

Byakuya had to do something.

Anything.

He had to break Renji's focus.

An idea sprouted in his head. It was horribly absurd, derogatory and shameful, but Byakuya found himself with no better option.

Renji, being able to hear the thoughts ongoing within his taichou, was terrified when he learned of Byakuya's plan.

"Don't do it! Don't! You win! I'll let you stay in my mind, just don't do it!"

Byakuya felt Renji's concentration break and was relieved when he saw that his hair and attire were all back to normal.

"Okay! You happy now? You can bug me all you want, I'm too tired to care anymore!"

He still thinks that I'm not really here… wait… perhaps if I executed that plan in mind then will he believe me…

"Oi stupid conscious! I thought we had an agreement! Don't DO IT!"

"If you do not acknowledge my existence as an individual, I shall do it. For by doing so it will prove that I am truly a separate individual from you as your mind would never be able to visualise an image of this degree with such lacking imagination."

Byakuya could sense Renji's frustration build up.

"What are you talking about? You're my conscious! Of course I'll treat you like one!"

"Fine then. If you do not believe me, I shall prove to you that I am not part of your being."

"Don't do it!" Renji pleaded. The captain could feel alarm rising from Renji's soul.

Byakuya was rather reluctant to execute such a move. No, he was completely against it. But how other would he be able to prove his existence? He would have to bear with it.

He could hear Renji's rushed train of thoughts resound in the inner world.

It will never happen. There's no way I can think up something like that! Even if I really am able to visualise such an image, it would most probably be blurred. Yeah, I definitely can't see something like that happen in my mind!

Oh? I'll show you, Abarai Renji…

Forcing back his pride, the captain took in a deep breath to prepare himself from an action that he had never found a purpose to carry out for ages.

He…

He…

(Sorry, I had to break the 4th wall here and say that I can't bear to type it out…)

(…)

(Fine, I'll type it…)

He smiled. (!!!)

"It seems that both of you had much fun in there."

A man donning a sleek white outfit turned to the source of the voice as he slowly pulled a door close.

"Hai, hai. What are you doing here, Aizen-sama?"

Aizen smiled lightly at the man before him.

"Ichimaru, do not forget that it is by the abilities of my blade that you are able to enjoy such pleasures."

That statement seemed to break Ichimaru's grin.

"But don't you think that's a lil' cruel? She totally believes tha' I'm real."

The tall man whose image screamed of unspoken power watched the younger man before him with mild amusement.

"Oh? Cruel, you say? Well then, do you think that you can receive such passion from her if she knows who you truly are?"

The sly grin on the man's face widened.

"I suppos' not."

A/N:

Did you get the last bit on Aizen and Ichimaru there? If you don't, remember who kidnapped Rukia in the last chapter? Ah, there you go! Hope that helps!

Well in case you're wondering, I already have the whole plot planned out. But of course, I'll amend the plot to suit the readers' needs!

I seriously have no idea HOW to write a good story, so if you would give me advise on that one, I'll be really grateful.

And OMG! Its the end of the world! [Maybe its just me overreacting :D]

Thanks for reading!

R&R! Criticism welcomed!