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Stark had never been one to measure time. There was no point to it in the vast wastelands of Hueco Mundo. Never the less, he guessed that a few decades at least must have passed since he came to follow Ichigo. Initially the orange haired boy had tried to keep a calendar of sorts, even going so far as to keep a sheaf of bound paper up his sleeve to jot down ideas and lists. However, he would inevitably become frustrated and scribble out whatever he had been writing.

Stark found it interesting to watch the delicate paper eventually yellow and crumble with age, having been taken from the human realm. Ichigo had shown reluctance to return to Soul Society, for which the arrancar was silently grateful.

When Lilinette asked what he was doing, he sighed in frustration and ran a hand through his hair.

"I'm not good at planning stuff out," he said, accompanied by a scowl. "And history has never been that interesting to me, what with everything else that was going on in the present."

At her confused expression, he smiled and patted her head. "It's nothing for you to worry about."

She wriggled and batted at his hand. "I'm not a little kid!" Despite her wining, Stark could feel the bubble of contentment she felt whenever the teen treated her in such a sisterly fashion.

Once, to break the monotony, Ichigo had asked Stark if he wanted to spar. The dark haired arrancar dubiously accepted at Lilinette's urging. One half hearted game of blade banging later, and Stark knew that even if he summoned his cero-wolf pack, he would not do more than annoy the powerful being before him.

That didn't stop his green haired partner from giving him a sound verbal thrashing for not trying hard enough, before nagging Ichigo to teach her some of his fancy sword skills.

Stark was just relieved that he could spend the time sleeping. His dreams were full of Lilinette's unbridled joy, pot marked by small frustrated bubbles when she failed to land a hit on her sparing partner.

Then one day her contentment was shattered by a bold of terror. Stark woke from his bed in a sand dune, reshi already charging in the air around him, when her fear calmed to curiosity.

The arrancar searched for his companions, who he was relieved to see were still in his line of sight on the hard packed earth not too far away.

A third dark figure with writhing tentacled lay on the ground before them. Evidentially this creature was what had frightened the girl so badly. She was currently huddled behind Ichigo's back, her fists clutching his black clothing as she peered around his leg at the strange being on the ground.

Stark buzzed over for a closer look. Lilinette immediately ran to his side for comfort.

"It tried to eat me!" she hissed angrily. "Then Ichigo kicked it, and it's tentacles went away."

He rested a hand on her helmet to quiet her rant before it gained momentum, and focused on the thing before him.

The creature looked just like Ichigo, albeit with black hair and green eyes instead of gold. Stark scented the air discreetly. It definitely smelled of hollow, but it was as if that was covered in a shinigami shell. The arrancar eyed it with more interest.

"Who are you," Ichigo's stern voice broke his pondering.

The creature glared at him in confusion, mouth contorted in pain as it clutched a bleeding wound on its stomach.

"Metastacia," it, Stark tentatively labeled it as a hollow when it's eyes bled black, clutched it's head. "No! No- I - I'm Kaien. Shiba Kaien."

The hollow curled closer around itself, internally struggling. Stark supposed it might have been a very young adjucas trying to overcome the various voices in its head and remain as the dominant personality. That didn't explain the human appearance though, or the lack of a mask.

Suddenly it flung itself at Ichigo's feet. "Please, I see your zanpakuto! Please kill me!"

Lilinette blanched, but Stark held her tightly.

Ichigo seemed unconcerned. "You've already been stabbed by a shinigami. Why do you think my sword will work?"

"Rukia mostly purified the hollow, but it hid itself deep inside me. It's using my powers to shield itself. Please, just kill me! I can't let it escape!"

The teen hummed in his throat. Walking over, he laid a hand on the brunette's head. Stark stiffened as he felt the normally ineffable reatsu sea around Ichigo sharpen and focus to a point. The man froze, held in place by the pressure.

"I won't kill you, Shiba Kaien. Or at least, not yet. You're going to go into your inner world and kill what's taking over your soul. Do you understand?"

"Please," his voice trailed off.

Ichigo scowled. "I didn't think the thirteenth division's vice-captain would be so weak."

Suddenly the green eyed hollow scowled to match his orange haired captors. His breath evened out and his gaze became blank.

"What's he doing?" Lilinette ventured to ask.

Ichigo released the hollow, his reitsu returning to an unattainable range. "He's fighting his inner hollow."

Stark frowned. "What if he loses?"

The teen sat back carelessly in the sand. "Then I'll fulfill his request." Then lowly, under his breath, Stark heard him mutter. "It's the least I can do for Rukia."

The teen walked to a sand dune and settled into a crossed legged seated pose Stark had seen him adopt before. The black chained sword lay across his knees contemplatively.

The creature, Kaien or Metastacia or whatever, had begun thrashing on the ground. Great wounds slashed across it's chest, expelling a white substance which hardened into bone, before shattering.

Lilinette wrinkled her nose. She wasn't used to hearing screams this close, what with her and Stark's former problem containing their power. Since joining Ichigo, the few hollows dumb enough to attack them didn't have enough time to make a sound before being neatly dispatched. The show was enough of a novelty to hold her attention.

"He said your sword was a zanpakuto," Stark said lowly, taking a seat beside him. Lilinette opted to continue watching the strange transformation taking place on the flat ground.

Ichigo reverently laid a hand on the blade. "Yes, or he was. Zangetsu...isn't inside anymore."

"That was it's name?"

Long orange hair fell to shadow the boy's face. "Yes. It was."

An echo of longing and loneliness rang in his companion's words. Stark didn't understand what a zanpakuto meant to a shinigami, let alone whatever Ichigo was, but he understood that tone.

"I'm sorry," he rumbled.

"It was my choice," the teen said. His gaze met the hollow's with a rueful grin. "Who would have thought that I would miss the voices in my head?"

From this Stark supposed that having a zanpakuto must be like being an adjucas, and couldn't understand why someone would miss the roaring sea of voices either. He nodded sagely.

Ichigo laughed.

"Hey! Hey!" Lilinette scrambled to their perch on the sand dune. "Hey! He stopped moving! Is he dead?"

She pointed over her shoulder to the creature, whose cries had fallen deathly silent as his body stilled. In one smooth motion, Ichigo stood, sword casually held aloft as he walked towards it.

"Kaien, you in there?" he called at the unmoving figure.

A crack split across the white shell, dissolving into a fine powder to reveal a crouched humanoid figure on the ground. Its scent had calmed from the sour pinch of struggling power to a frenzied calm. Stark might have compared it to a calm within a storm, had he ever experienced that particular weather phenomenon.

The figure's head tilted up, revealing a white mask with blacked out eyes lined with bright blue swirls. A sinister smile of serrated shark teeth ponderously crossed the mask's bottom, and spiky fins curved back from the mask's sides to curl in the shaggy black hair.

It stood, still quite naked, and faced the trio.

Stark covered Lilinette's eyes. She squealed in protest, but he ignored her. They had kept the green furred hollow hide, even after Ichigo had stolen them some cloths. The arrancar had been using it as bedding, but decided that it should return to its former purpose as clothing. He kicked the bundle towards the figure, who didn't react beyond catching it. Still, it covered enough for Stark to release his other half's eyes.

"Kaien?" Ichigo called again, more tensely this time. "How do you feel?"

"I-," it moved listlessly, life returning to its body as it cast about in confusion. "I feel-"

Suddenly the figure seized and fell to its knees. The mask on its face shattered, leaving behind only the curling fins.

Stark was just glad that it collapsed underneath the cloak.

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A/N: Stark refers to Kaien as 'it' because Metastacia has no gender, or if it did would smell female, since it had just killed Kaiens wife not too long ago. Therefore hollow-Kaien-Metastacia would smell both male and female, therefore would, to Stark, be neither.

When Kaien's mask shattered, some was left behind. Make of that plot point what you will.