Standard disclaimer applies.
WARNING! Plenty spoilers for manga chapter 246!
Author's notes: I read 246 and immediately began playing out a scene. Couldn't stop myself. While we all "patiently" wait for next chapter to come around, I'll leave you with this tiny drabble.

Frozen
04.10.2006

He hears the voice chanting and he immediately knows. The sweat that runs down his cheek suddenly freezes and he is sure. He feels that strong-willed spirit power surrounding him and he is already seeing without having to turn around. In matter of seconds there's a five-meter monster frozen up in a cube behind him, the same that was about to drown him, his friends, and that bunch of weird arrancar inside a whirpool of sand. But the thing could pretty much unfreeze any moment for all he cares and he wouldn't mind. Ichigo's eyes are wide open and his jaw is tight. His heart is clenching inside his chest and he even does an intake of breathe. That's…

…that's freakin' stupid Rukia!

He doesn't yell out at her on that very moment because he is way too shocked to utter a complete sentence.

Just what the hell is she doing here? With that idiot of a friend of hers Renji, who looks like a little puppy beside her, no less! She is simply smiling like she has no worries in the world, like she hasn't just frozen that insanely huge hollow with her shikai. And what is it with her and entrances, anyway? It's always like she practices or something, because it always happens when they meet. She always makes him look like a gaping fool, too.

The first time she appeared, he seriously freaked out. No other words for that. After all, it's not like a person in a traditional Japanese black get-up (a haori with sleeves slighty too long for her and hakama that covered most of her feet, with sword included and all) is supposed to pop into your room in the middle of the night to slash the monsters following after you. The second time they met… well, technically that had been his turn to show up out of nowhere and it hadn't been so pretty then (which just proved who was better at those arrival stuff) either. He'd been annoyed at her and he couldn't even look at her in the eye while she looked so incredibly small and helpless; they'd ended up quarreling, also, and called each other stupid. And then, there was that time not so long ago when she literally came through the classroom's window and proceeded to kick his sorry ass. He remembers being shocked and unable to speak, and after that, he only remembers the pain and running about with her on his back in search for a hollow. Oh, and that speech. That had been a heck of a bombshell.

Now this?

Isn't she supposed to be back at Soul Society? And Renji as well? Hadn't that old man even sent Byakuya and Zaraki to take them home because they weren't allowed to meddle in human affairs? Hell, seriously… Rukia's got some deep shit going on. And Renji too. What is the bastard thinking? They had just risked their necks and more than that to save her life and now he brings Rukia into a battlefield where a safe return isn't guaranteed.

He doesn't have time to be dwelling on the girl's dramatic ways of showing up in the middle of nowhere, actually, or the reason why she is now standing over there with that cloak billowing behind her and that proud air floating around her. Inoue is still waiting somewhere in that white castle and she must be saved; Aizen is still planning his war and creating more monsters and he must be stopped. Ichigo really wants to ask what the hell is wrong with her and her crazy antics, but there is not enough time. (Is she trying to make him go mad?) He feels like either strangling her or hugging her (she had just saved him after all), but there is no time.

There's no time...

So he waits for her next move.