"Are all Shinigami as pig-headed as you are? Is that how you advanced through the ranks to become a Lieutenant?"

Daruma looked at Renji. He was down on one knee, tying up his Zanpakutō to his right hand using the wrap of his Lieutenant badge. He pulled the knot tight with his teeth and his left hand, and painfully stood up. Half of his clothes had been torn off, and his wounds were close to the limit of what he could take.

Stupid damn limiter!

"Truth to be told..." The arrancar looked at the two wounds Renji had given him. "I was expecting a bit more from a Lieutenant of the Gotei 13. I suppose the effects of Aizen-sama's war on the Shinigami was felt through the ranks. There is clearly a shortage of qualified officers."

Renji suddenly made a swipe with Zabimaru, which Daruma seemed to be expecting. He jumped aside using sonido, and Renji continued his attack, extending Zabimaru even more. A few seconds later he had made a full circle, raising his Zanpakutō over his head, then another, gaining momentum and turning it into a whirlwind.

"Blah, blah, blah, will you shut up already. I'm starting to get sick of listening to your voice, and Aizen-sama this, and Aizen-sama that, and I had this for breakfast. Just shut up already!"

When Renji finally made another attack, Daruma dodged by jumping high, but Zabimaru had so much momentum it ripped right through the pavement, creating a shower of dust and debris of considerable size.

Daruma saw through the mist how Renji had made a wild swing, overshooting high, but then Zabimaru started coming down towards him. He dodged easily, in fact the attack didn't seem powerful enough to reach him.

Hmp, how foolish.

"Hadō thirty-one, Red Fire Cannon!"

The voice came from behind him, and really, really close. He turned in time to see the glow of the kidō forming not one meter from his face. He didn't have time to make another move, before he could focus his reiatsu for sonido the spell was released and a sizeable explosion ensued.

Renji was so close he got some of it, but Daruma got hit full on the face. It took both of them a few seconds to stand up again, dragging themselves up with various degrees of difficulty. Half of Daruma's mask had been cracked, and much of the white flesh underneath was looking rather scarred, with burns going down to his belly and upper arms.

He was breathing hard, and looked rather unhappy, to say the least. Renji took a few steps and picked up Zabimaru again.

"You..." Daruma struggled to speak. "I can't believe you let go of your Zanpakutō. You went through all the trouble of tying it to your hand... And doing such a flashy spinning move..."

"Yeah." Renji smirked. "And you fell into it face first."

Daruma ground his teeth together angrily. Renji could barely stand, but the cocky smirk on his face was making the arrancar absolutely furious.

That... That damn Shinigami!

He raised one hand and concentrated, and his reiatsu started climbing. A few seconds later a few portals opened, and hollows started pouring out.

"Tsk. You're still underestimating me, aren't you? I'm a freaking Lieutenant of the Gotei 13! You think these lowly hollows can take me?"

"You are the one underestimating me... Shinigami."

There was venom in Daruma's voice as he called Renji a Shinigami. As his reiatsu became more focused, it became visible, thin glowing yellow threads reaching from his fingertips towards the hollows. They screamed in pain as the threads touched them, and moments later they started to be pushed towards each other. The screams increased in intensity as the hollows merged, one after another, until there were only four of them left. Renji didn't even have time to go over all the grotesque details from the merger. They all had some form of wings or another, multiple limbs... He settled for mentally labelling them by the most horrid prominent feature. Fanged lizard, monkey (why is there always a damn monkey in all these mix-ups!), blood-sucking bug (ewww), and something else.

That's... Ugh... An armoured rat or something? Straight from the museum of horrors, sheesh.

"You were saying, Shinigami?"

"I was saying..." Renji raised his Zanpakutō, pointing it at Daruma. "You speak too damn much!"

Zabimaru shot straight ahead, and Daruma zipped out of the way with sonido. With a flick, Renji made it change direction and, taking a sharp bend, it continued extending, rushing the armored rat. The impact was easily deflected by the scaled carapace of the rat, but the deflection took it straight towards the arrancar again. He dodged more narrowly this second time, and just as the Zanpakutō shot past him, it crushed the face of the giant monkey.

The familiar screams of the hollows splitting and merging again greeted his ears.

It was much easier when they just died after we sliced them. What a pain in the butt.

It was hard slog for him, destrying every hollow component one by one. Without waiting, he pulled hard and made Zabimaru spin around to try and keep him safe. It seemed to work well, until he noticed something above him.

The bug. It hadn't moved with reiatsu, it had simply flapped its wings and was falling towards him. He had Zabimaru doing a wide sweep around hit, it'd be impossible to bring it around on time.

Shit.

"Next Dance, Hakuren!"

Music to Renji's ears, and his expression made it clear. The wave of ice shot above his head, freezing the hollow completely. He took the extra few moments to pull Zabimaru back and get out of the way before the ice collapsed, shattering into a thousand pieces and destroying the hollow completely.

"Renji! Are you okay?" Rukia called.

"Yeah. No problem. Good of you to join us!"

The scream of a second hollow followed almost immediately, as Ichigo rushed forward with his oversized Zanpakutō and split the monkey, or what was left of it, in half. At the same time the rat exploded, for lack of a better word, when a series of blows crushed it and every hollow that tried to split from the rest of the body. The final one was when Yoruichi crushed the face of the last hollow with her kidō covered foot.

"Look at you." Rukia scolded him. "Were you getting your butt kicked?"

"What's that? Look at him." Renji pointed at Daruma, who had taken a few extra safety steps and was looking at the new arrivals with a distrustful eye. "You telling me I look worse than him? Besides, it ain't easy fighting with the freaking limiter on!"

"Limiter?" Rukia asked, all innocence.

"What the... You're a Lieutenant now, don't tell me you didn't notice the limiter."

Crickets chirping. Gears turning inside Rukia's head. A vein pulsed on Renji's forehead until, with an expression of sudden understanding, Rukia mouthed a wordless "oh".

"That! Captain Ukitake put in some paperwork so I didn't have to have one. I think Nii-sama may have put a word in too." She answered, still smiling innocently.

For a few moments, they just looked at each other.

"You have to be kidding me! That's blatant favouritism!" Renji yelled, angry. "How come I've never heard of that? And the Captain never let me come without the damn limiter either! What the hell! I'll-"

"Renji." Rukia interrupted.

"What?"

"Stop complaining." She answered, giving him a flat look.

"Why you..."

"Limiters are necessary, or damage from uncontrolled reiatsu could be dangerous to normal souls." She said, adopting the pose of a teacher lecturing a student.

"But you don't have one!"

"Stop complaining."

"…"

"Shihōin Yoruichi." Daruma said calmly, ignoring the others. "I have to say, it is somewhat disappointing to see Katsutoshi didn't trap you like he promised he could. I presume the red tint on the dimensional rifts are Urahara Kisuke's doing?"

"Of course. Did you really think you could get us out of the way that easily?" She grinned.

"It was a possibility. Naturally, no plan ever survives contact with the enemy. As it stands, I shall get you out of the way myself."

"Oh really. You and what army?"

"Ah yes, the army. I concede Aizen was correct when he identified the need of a few powerful individuals for his own."

"I'll take that as a compliment." Yoruichi responded.

"As you will. However, the advantages of a versatile numerous army are greater. In this particular situation..." He unsheathed his sword. "Perhaps another option will be more indicated." He let go of his sword, but it didn't fall. Thin yellow threads of reiatsu held it in place, hovering just under his hand. "Move... Marioneta!"

There was a blast, Daruma's reiatsu suddenly surged as he released his resurrección. Yoruichi placed her right arm over her face to protect her eyes from the wind, while a yellow light bathed everything. Then it disappeared, it left behind Daruma's new form. He... It would be a more accurate description. It looked like a massive ten feet metallic statue, dark in colour with a rough, irregular surface. Still humanoid, more like a suit of armor, but surprisingly plain. No spikes, no adornments.

There was a rather disagreeable rattling sound as Daruma twisted his body side to side, getting reacquainted with his body.

"So that's your resurrección. What can it do?" Yoruichi asked, unimpressed.

"Perhaps..." His voice came out dull, reverberating with a metallic echo. "Perhaps you would like to find out?"

Yoruichi smirked. She concentrated, and her reiatsu started to materialize around her arms. Soon it was intense enough to cover her completely as she created her favourite form of hand-to-hand combat kidō .

"Shunkō!"

She disappeared as her shunpo carried her at a speed few could ever hope to match. She appeared in front of Daruma before he had a chance to even blink, if he still could blink under that form, and her powerful kick on the chest area sent fragments of the armor flying everywhere. There were cracking and metal scraping sounds as the armour realigned itself, ending up a tiny bit smaller but in identical condition. Despite having taken such a powerful kick, Daruma had only moved a couple of steps back.

He's heavy!

His sluggish counter was easily dodged by the god of flash. She moved under his arm, and with an upper thrust of her right fist, sent even more pieces flying. Again, the armour realigned itself.

"Man, she's gonna kick his ass if that's all he can do." Renji remarked.

"Don't feel bad, Renji." Rukia answered.

"Why the hell would I?"

Rukia gave him a flat look again, and a vein throbbed on Renji's forehead.

"If he had taken that form from the start I'd have moped the floor with him! Look at him, he can barely move!"

"No reaction from Rukia, with a look between boredom and disappointment.

"You know..." Ichigo interrupted them. "Renji's right."

"Why the hell do you sound so surprised?" Renji shouted.

"What's your problem now?"

"Oi, you two, stop it, now's not the time."

They both looked at Rukia.

"But you started it!"

"Renji. Stop complaining."

"..."

"What I meant is that it seems rather foolish to take that form against Yoruichi." Ichigo said, interrupting.

"So?" Renji asked.

"So, if he knows about Yoruichi he should've known it was a bad idea."

"Um." Rukia looked at the combatants, thinking. "You think he's planning something?"

"Probably."

"Well, I'm sure she has realized that too." Renji answered

Yoruichi stopped her relentless attack for a moment. There were pieces of armour strewn all around her, and her opponent had, literally, thinned quite noticeably. She furrowed her brow as she spoke.

"You have anything else in there? Because this isn't going to get you anywhere."

"In here is not quite what I had in mind."

Daruma raised his arms, with his hands opened wide and palms facing down. The expected pose from a puppeteer. As he moved his fingers, Yoruichi caught the sound of metallic tinkling. She looked around, and noticed the pieces of the armor were starting to move. Almost at once, the pieces converged into big piles, and with perfectly regular, almost clockwork movements, they started arranging themselves.

It was barely a second before Yoruichi was surrounded by a dozen metallic puppets, with grotesque humanoid shapes. They seemed to shake as if they were about to fall down or split into pieces again.

"Hm, I see."

"I hope you do, for your own good."

When Daruma moved his fingers again, the puppets attacked Yoruichi, at a speed she had not expected. The god of flash managed to dodge the attacks and, after confusing her enemies with a decoy double image, she took one of the puppets from behind with an explosively powerful punch of Shunkō.

The pieces hadn't moved ten inches before they started rearranging themselves once more, again in the form of a humanoid, but with its hands around Yoruichi's arm.

For a moment Yoruichi was surprised, not just for the change, but also by the effect. As soon as the puppet touched her, she felt completely glued to it. It took her a few moments to realize it had stuck to her reiatsu, and had to blow everything she could over her arm to snap the near-invisible threads of reiatsu that had taken hold of her Shunkō.

Not a moment too soon. At first it looked like several of the puppets had run her through with their slender, sharp metal shrapnel arms, but the image was then gone, leaving behind her hair ribbon fluttering down through the air.

"Way of the Onmitsu, Utsusemi." She said softly from a safe distance.

"Your reputation is well earned." Daruma said. "But do you believe it will be enough to defeat us?"

"I wonder." She answered, smirking.