He flung her off his arm--Rukia twisted in midair, landing in a crouch over the lake. The water rippled under her feet but held. She stayed there a moment, waiting for the ribbon to follow the rest of the way, curled in a half moon beside her.

Zabimaru drew back in a successive clack of metal vertebrae. Renji held him in front of his face. His long teeth echoing those of the sword as he angled it suggestively.

"Oi," he said, grinning wide. "Bitch."

"Hello," said Rukia, sinking back on one leg. "Fool."

She leapt backwards into a whirl, her toes barely touching the surface again as she bounced. She dipped her hilt, and looped the ribbon about the empty air, once, twice, three times.

Renji stared at the sudden paleness of the water on which he stood. "BITCH," he snarled, in an entirely different tone. "ZABIMA--"

His roar was cut off by the upward surge of ice.

Rukia landed with a laugh. Watching the block in the lake. "Well, would be Honored Sixth Seat! What do you have to say to that! Nothing, I suppose, until I choose to release you. You are not the only who has..."

The ice made a creak. Rukia felt her heart lurch. "...wait--."

The block exploded, Rukia's feet sunk an a inch beneath the water for a moment in pure shock, as she raised her arm to shield her face. "RENJI--" she shouted, desperately. It hadn't just...she hadn't willed it--

Renji was still standing in the middle of the lake, chunks of ice and cold water dripping off the jagged framework of Zabimaru, wrapped so tight about himself that it drew blood around his shoulders, but teeth still cutting into their would-be prison: like a saw.

"Eh, Rukia," he husked, his breathe white smoke. "You were saaaaaying?"

He took a step forward, and then nearly drowned as he chose that exact moment to pass the hell out.