Disclaimer: If I owned Bleach, I'd give it to Kubo Tite anyway.
In the Name of the Moon
"In the name of the moon…"
"What?"
Rukia looks up from her manga. Ichigo is twisted around in his desk chair, glaring at her. "What do you want?" she says.
"What the hell was that?"
"Was what?"
"What are you reading?"
"Nothing." She is still holding the manga open, wrists braced against her knees.
"You said 'in the name of the moon.' Are you reading SAILOR MOON?"
"No."
He's out of the chair now, stomping across the room to tower over her. "Where the hell did you get it? Please don't tell me you were in Karin and Yuzu's room."
"I will gladly not tell you anything. Stop questioning me, and move. You're in my light."
He reaches for the book instead. Rukia pulls it away, but not quickly enough: Ichigo catches half of it in one hand. His fingers cover most of the page.
"Let go!"
"You let go!"
"You're going to tear your sister's manga." He doesn't let go, but he stops pulling.
"I knew it! You idiot, you can't just go in there, someone might see you!"
"No one was home."
"What do you want to read this crap for anyway?"
"I'm studying human culture."
"This is not human culture! This is –" she's made the mistake of letting her grip relax since he stopped tugging, so when he suddenly yanks on the book they're both still holding, it flies out of her hands. He scowls at the page she was reading. "Look at this. Who does this? Standing on the window ledge?"
"I go in and out through windows all the time. So do you," she points out. From her seat on the floor, she has to tilt her head way back to glare at him properly. Her neck rests on the bed behind her.
"This is not climbing through windows because you're sneaking around, idiot! This is posing dramatically and making speeches!" He waves the page in her face. "No one would ever actually do this."
Rukia has a plan.
Renji doesn't think much of her plan, but she explains it to Captain Hitsugaya anyway, and he rolls his eyes and says she can get there however she wants, as long as she gets there and she doesn't make anyone suspicious.
It's probably a good thing Hitsugaya's spent less time in the human world than she has.
Tracking the progress of five high-level shinigami, even constrained by gigais, as they make their way through the school corridors is easy; keeping track of Ichigo's spiritual pressure is even easier. The idiot still hasn't learned to hide his power. The whole building glows with it, but she has long since learned to sense other spiritual pressures through Ichigo's unrestrained aura. She leans against the wall of Karakura High School and waits as the blob of her coworkers' power approaches the bright pinpoint in the middle of the aura that is Ichigo.
She is impatient; when she leaps up to catch the ledge of a window in Ichigo's classroom, Renji and the others are still out in the hall. Her gigai responds smoothly to her commands; the two-story jump is almost as easy as it would be in her true form. It's a far cry from her abilities the last time she was here.
Nevertheless, hanging from a window ledge by her fingertips with her chest pressed against a wall is not exactly comfortable. She tries bracing her feet against the building, but she suspects she's more conspicuous with her butt sticking out like that. She wonders how Sailor Moon does it. Maybe this wasn't such a great idea after all.
She hears voices inside. Ichigo is shouting. Rukia ducks her head against the building and snickers. When Ichigo calls Hitsugaya by his given name, and is subsequently corrected by a grumpy-sounding Captain, she has to let go of the ledge with one hand and cover her mouth so she won't give her presence away by laughing.
Stopping herself from cackling at the lot of them puts a lot of strain on the fingers of her left hand. She grimaces. The thought that Ichigo may have been right about no one actually doing this occurs to her; she ignores it.
"Allan… what?" she hears Ichigo say. Rukia rolls her eyes. Getting into fights without paying any attention to who his enemies are or how badly they're likely to beat him, as usual.
Renji exclaims disgustedly over Ichigo's stupidity, but doesn't answer the question, so Rukia, still hanging by one hand, yells over him, "Dumbass! Those were the guys that nearly killed you yesterday!"
This'll have to be her moment, then. She vaults up onto the windowsill.
The look on Ichigo's face is priceless. It would be impossible not to smirk. Fortunately, Rukia has no reason to hold back.
"…Rukia!" he gasps, still staring like he can't believe she's there, like maybe he's afraid to believe it. So, she decides, the entrance was definitely worth the effort after all.
"Long time no see, eh Ichigo?"