Me: Well, I figured I'd go ahead and post the second chapp while I'm here. You guys can live with that, right? Can you? CAN YOU?
Rukia: (sweatdrops) Um, Mandy?
Me: Why yes, Rukia?
Rukia: (stage-whispers) I think you're scaring them off...!
Me: Ohhh...right, right... (plasters on huge, freakish grin) READ IT NOW!
Ichigo: ...Dumbass.
Me: Tite Kubo owns the awesome Bleach characters and storyline, I own the less-than-awesome Americans and this nowhere-near-as-great storyline. I think you'll be able to tell the difference. I have the utmost faith in you.
She sprayed the first one she saw in the face with all the shaving cream in the can. It got him, but it didn't take long for her to realize that he practically reeked of that strange aura that always accompanied ghosts, making her gasp.
"Holy crap...Hey, wait a minute..." She gasped again, scrutinizing him. "YOU?"
He scrutinized her right back, suddenly putting two and two together and pointing at her. "YOU LIVE HERE? OH MY GOD, IT'S THE YANKEE CHICK!"
It was none other than the Kurosaki kid, and some...teddy bear? It seemed to be in shock, if that was possible. Just then, Lindsay barged in, meat cleaver in hand. All three sweatdropped.
"Um, Lindsay...why are you wearing a hair net and wielding a giant meat cleaver?" Peyton asked carefully as she watched all the steam escape the room with a tiny sigh of disappointment. She loved stepping out of showers with all that steam in the room!
Lindsay rolled her eyes. "Dad asked me to wear a hair net...he doesn't want hair to fall in his food. Blonde's just too hard to make out, and after Seth choked on it last night, he doesn't wanna take any chances."
"Um...okayyy..."
"Anyways, what's with all the racket? Here I am, slaving away over your food, and I hear you yelling something at the top of your lungs-" Lindsay stopped abruptly and spastically looked around, trying to cover her head so the hair net couldn't be seen. "PLEASE tell me some hot...ghost dude isn't laughing at me right now!"
Peyton glanced at the shaking-with-laughter orange-headed guy and shook her head. "Nope. No hot ones."
"HEY!" She ignored him.
Lindsay sighed. "Oh, good. Well, if you're okay.."
"Yes, still alive. Could you shut the door before you let out whatever steam might be left in here? Don't want to have to buy a new smoke detector after Dad hits it with a bat again..."
"Yeah, that's true. OK then."
As she shut the door, the pervert shook his head. "Yankees are crazy..."
Peyton gave him a glare. "Ignoring that. If you don't mind, I'm kinda cold. Could you maybe, I dunno...GET THE HELL OUT OF MY BATHROOM?"
SEVEN MINUTES LATER...
She stepped out of the bathroom, fully dressed, to address The Problem.
"Now I just have to..." Peyton trailed off as she noticed the teddy bear sniffing a bottle of Lindsay's favorite perfume. "Ahh...Almost better than Orihime's!" he exclaimed happily, practically cuddling the bottle.
She sweatdropped. "...Find them."
Kurosaki kid popped up out of nowhere, making her yelp. "You have no idea how long it took to get that shaving cream off my face!"
She put her hands on her hips. "Serves you right for being a pervert! What were you doing in my bathroom, and what the hell is all this Soul Reaper business?"
He sighed. "Um...This would be a lot easier to explain if I were in my body again."
"Come again?"
He rolled his eyes and tugged her and the bear along. "Just come with me!"
She pried his fingers off her shirt. "I will NOT be dragged around by an invisible hand!"
"Wait...so you can't see me? Now I'm confused!"
"No, I can see you, but not many other people can if you're as...ghost-y as you feel. No one in this house can, anyways. So...IF YOU DON'T MIND, I would like to look SOMEWHAT sane while talking to myself."
As they walked out the front door, Peyton threw over her shoulder, "To whom it may concern, I'm going out for a while!"
After trying to keep up with him for about two blocks, he stopped abruptly in front of a house, causing her to spastically wave her arms and sway a little to keep from ramming into him. "Wait here."
She sighed and waved him off. "Yeah yeah." While he was inside, she crossed her arms and looked at his house; not like she had much else to look at. According to the Kanji on the front of it, his house doubled as a clinic. The clinic part of it jutted out from the rest, with the rest of the house branching to the left. There was railing with some bushes, and it had two floors to it, all topped off with a green roof. All-in-all, she deduced it was cooler than her current house, which made her even more depressed about moving here in the first place.
Goddammit.
Two minutes later, he walked out in a normal t-shirt and jeans. Peyton smirked. "Aw, no robe? I thought it was making a great fashion statement."
He scowled at that, and she scowled right back. "So...plan on explaining before I turn eighty, or what?"
THIRTY MINUTES LATER...
"Well, gee, if you had said you were buying me food I would've been a lot nicer," Peyton muttered, switching her little sack of fries to her other hand as she struggled once again to keep up with him. "So, lemme get this straight...Soul Reapers bring the dead to this Soul Society, and chase after Hollows, which are spirits that went off the deep end, basically?"
"Yeah."
"And...Rukia's really 'dead', aka a full-fledged Soul Reaper from the Soul Society, and her body's a gigai, which is just a Soul Reaper's human form?"
"Uh-huh."
"And you're alive and from this plane of existence, but when your family was about to be killed by Hollows, or eaten, or whatever the hell they do, she transferred her powers to you, and boom! You're a part-time Soul Reaper?"
"Pretty much."
"And...I'm supposed to believe this is true, not some elaborate story you made up to cover the fact that you were somehow in my bathroom hoping to get a flash show or something? Because my Aunt Kate warned me about guys like that around here!" she informed him, making him sweatdrop as she plopped down beside some random fountain defiantly.
He rolled his eyes before sitting down next to her, making that bear of his squeeze between them to feel like a part of the conversation. "First of all, who would peek at you? And secondly, how come your sister didn't see me? And how come you thought I was a ghost? And what was that about me feeling like a ghost? Speaking of which, how the hell can you see me when I'm in my Soul Reaper form in the first place?"
Peyton shrugged. "I've seen plenty of ghosts, you're no different. Dad says I got it from my mom. The red hair or something," she explained carelessly, too busy munching happily. "As for you feeling like a ghost, I've noticed they all feel about the same. It's kinda...well, cold obviously, but there's just some kind of otherworldly feeling about them. It makes my scalp tingle. And you felt the same way," she elaborated.
He nodded. "I get what you mean. I've felt that around ghosts, too."
She sweatdropped. "And yet it's just so surprising that someone else can see ghosts like you can?"
That just made his temple throb. "...That's besides the point!" he exclaimed defensively.
"Tch. Whatever. Wait, so why were you in my bathroom exactly? You never explained that part."
The bear nudged him secretively, apparently trying not to be noticed by passersby. "...Should we be telling her all this?" Most people would be kind of freaked out about a talking stuffed animal. It's pretty bad when you can just shrug and say 'I've seen weirder', Peyton noted with a sweatdrop.
"What harm could it do? It's better than her calling the cops on us or something, and she looks like she gets it."
"Um, I'm sitting right here," Peyton commented dully with a sweatdrop.
"Oh, right. Anyway, Rukia sent me to take care of this Hollow on my own. I didn't expect anyone alive to be there, much less armed with shaving cream."
She smirked. "Rule number one: Expect the unexpected."
THIRTY-FOUR MINUTES LATER...
"I still don't really get it," she informed him matter-of-factly, arms crossed against her middle.
"Get WHAT?" he asked with an impatient sigh as they walked home. The guy wasn't half bad, he had the decency to walk her home. The least he could do for interrupting her shower, plus he probably was trying to make sure she didn't call the cops or anything.
"The whole switch between Rukia's powers and yours. How'd she do it?"
"Oh, that. Basically she transferred it through her sword, and my own spiritual energy did the rest. Simple," he said with a shrug.
Peyton sighed. "NOTHING about this info-dump you've given me is simple. This would've been a lot easier if you had shown me some kind of diagram or something, I mean, pictures make everything easier."
He sweatdropped. "Not if the drawings are crappy. Trust me on this." She gave him a weird look and was about to reply when something quite literally ran her down.
Before Peyton could quite process what was happening, she was skidding on the ground and some huge gray creature was above her, ready to strike, dust from the road billowing behind it. She flinched as it roared and its claws slashed through the air, but they never struck her.
With a quick flash of sun glinting against metal, Kurosaki kid had sliced right through the...thing with his zanpakuto - that Soul Reaper blade he'd mentioned. It soon disappeared, and he was back in his body in no time at all. Peyton watched on in a shocked silence before standing up slowly. "W-What...What the hell was that?"
"Hollow."
Her face fell. "Holy shit, you weren't bluffing. There goes my theory about the straightjacket and whatnot..."
His temple throbbed at that, but then he made a face. "You don't look so good. Kind of...green?"
Peyton shook herself quickly. "I-I'm fine, just...shaken up, I guess? That was the most fucked-up thing I've ever seen..." She glanced down at her leg and made a face. There were three giant, claw-like slashes trailing down her calf. "Ewwww, they're sort of slowly oozing blood!" she exclaimed, shaking her leg as if that would get the marks to vanish.
He cocked his head, sweatdropping at her spastic leg-shaking. "Wow. Looks kind of like Orihime's, only...bloodier."
Peyton rolled her eyes. "Gee, thanks. ...You know, I have yet to catch your name."
"I'm Ichigo Kurosaki." Heh. Strawberry? Figures.
"Oh. Well, Ichigo, thanks for saving me from a freaky, painful death," she said cheerfully as she walked with him around the corner, favoring her injured leg but trying not to show it hurt. Last thing she needed was another reason to stick around, she was tired and confused enough as it was.
"Um...you're welcome. Should I call you Yankee?"
"Sure, if you have a death wish. My name's Peyton." She stopped at a four-way stop, walking backwards so she could look at him. "Well, this is where we go separate ways. See ya," she said with a half-wave.
Ichigo grabbed her arm and tugged her the other direction. "Whoa whoa whoa, where do you think you're going?"
"Um, I dunno, home maybe?"
"No way, you were just attacked, you idiot!"
"...So? You killed it! You went all Ninja-Like on it! I saw you!"
"Yeah, but if one didn't get you, the others will. Unless, of course, you stick with a Soul Reaper," he explained proudly.
Peyton sweatdropped. "Well...are there any other Soul Reapers?"
He just rolled his eyes and gave her an extra-hard tug as he practically dragged her around several corners. "You're coming with me. At least for a few hours. The last thing I need is a guilty conscience."
She sighed exasperatedly. Not only was he about twice her size, but she had to admit he was pretty strong, so she highly doubted anything short of kicking him in the groin and making a break for it would help her at all. But then she'd have to run away with her hurt leg, and he had saved her ass back there...
Peyton settled with scowling and giving him a fake salute. "Aye-aye, Mon Capitan."
When they got back to his house, Ichigo glanced at her as he opened the door. "You might wanna duck."
"What?"
Almost as soon as the door was opened, a man with spiky black hair dove outside, aiming for Ichigo's face. He simply ducked and let the man land in a bush, and Peyton tripped over a twig and landed flat on her back. "WELCOME BACK, SON!" he exclaimed, struggling with the bush before springing out of it cheerfully.
Peyton sat up, blowing the bangs out of her eyes, and Ichigo's dad's eyes widened to the size of saucers. "Who's THIS?" he asked with a drawn-out gasp, making both Peyton and a younger dark-haired girl that had been standing by the front door sweatdrop.
"Um...I'm Peyton?" she offered, almost as if it were a trick question.
"Isn't that one of the Yankee Kids?" a girl with light brown hair asked the other girl, who nodded.
"I think so."
Peyton's temple throbbed, and Ichigo sighed. "Look, can she stay here for a while? Maybe for the night?"
Mr. Kurosaki's jaw dropped, as did the brunette's. "W-WHAAAT?"
"A girl?"
"Here?"
"The night?"
"Does Rukia know about this, son? " he demanded, and Ichigo promptly kicked him in the face.
"It's nothing like that!"
Peyton sweatdropped as the two started fighting, and the darker-haired girl just shook her head before jerking her thumb towards the inside of the house. "Come on in, this'll take a while."