It had been three days since she had seen the flier, and still no one was around who was willing or able to give her a ride. The little illusionist decided to go by herself. This was a very unwise thing to do. She knew this, and she was going anyway.

At least this time she was taking some precautions. She had been practicing self-defense every day with Sam. She had a can of pepper spray. And most importantly, she had camouflage.

A fourteen year old girl was an easy target; she'd found out the hard way. This time, she was going to be someone no one would want to pick on. Someone intimidating. Someone so B.A. that no one would dream of attacking.

She was going to be Nigel Banks.

Ten minutes in front of the mirror, and she smiled two smiles at her mirror. One smile was flashing white teeth set in dark skin, the other was invisible, somewhere inside the big black man's chest. Nigel was a lot taller than she was, after all.

--

It was a long walk to Spiritual Balance. By the time she actually got there, Katrina's feet were very sore. It was hot, and she was sweating. She really hoped that she wouldn't have to walk back home again, too.

Mirage Nigel pushed open the door. There was no bell to sound when the door opened, but then, Hunter didn't really seem like a person that would have liked extraneous bells. A secretary smiled up at him upon his entrance. Her smile reminded Katrina of someone else's.

“Where would I find Mr. Antonescu?” Nigel's deep voice grumbled like far away thunder.

Ellie looked up at the gentleman who had just walked in. The traffic had died down a little now that a few days had passed. Truth be told she was surprised how many people came in the first day alone. Secretly she wondered who her employer was to be so popular on opening day when all they’d done to advertise was hand out some flyers. But the pay was good so she didn’t bother to ask.

Flashing the man a smile she replied, “I think he’s in the meditation room at the moment. He’s free if you’d like to go on through.” She was still a little perturbed by Hunter’s policy of just letting people come through and see him if he wasn’t in a private session, but he was the boss, he got to set the rules.

“Ah, I see, yes.” Nigel Bank's face nodded and smiled at the young secretary. “Thank you.”

Katrina wanted to run into the other room and leap into Hunter's arms... but it wasn't something that Nigel would do, so as long as the secretary lady could see her, she had to remain in character. Silly glass walls.

She knocked gently on the glass as she walked into what the lady had called the meditation room. There was Hunter, dark hair cropped short now, eyes even more reflective than she remembered.

Again, she rumbled, “Mr. Antonescu, welcome back to New York City.” He glanced meaningfully back through the glass at the secretary who was still watching curiously over her shoulder, but turned away at Nigel's glance.

“Is there somewhere a little more private we could talk?”

Hunter didn’t open his eyes when he heard someone walk in. The voice however caused him to snap his eyes open. “Nigel,” Hunter said as he rose to his feet, “No chance this is just a social call to see how your old boss is doing is there?”

“Come on,” he said as he exited the meditation room and headed for the stairs, “We can talk upstairs.” Truthfully Hunter wondered what had brought Nigel Banks, his old number two, to his door. As he had said, he doubted it was a social call.

Nigel arched his eyebrows non noncommittally at Hunter's question. It felt really odd to deceive Hunter like this, but it seemed sort of necessary, at least for the moment. At least it wasn't with any bad intentions that she did it.

Hunter led the way to the stairway and Nigel followed him up to the top, but it was Katrina who stood there at the top once the immortal turned around again.

“I'm sorry I tricked you,” Katrina apologized in her own voice. “I just didn't want to get mugged on the way here.” Or kidnapped or raped, for that matter.

Now that she was here, the little illusionist wasn't quite sure what to do. It had been so long since she had seen Hunter. Would he even remember her? She looked down at her feet and waited for his reaction.

Hunter was more than a little surprised when he turned round and found not his old number two but Katrina. He’d thought of the girl many times while in Tibet. She was one of the few people who he hadn’t hurt before he left.

“A wise precaution,” he said with a smile, “I’m glad to see you Katrina. I’m sorry I left suddenly, but I needed to sort things out away from everyone. I should have spoken to you before I left.” He didn’t know if she resented him for leaving without a word. In fact he had no idea how she felt about him.

He smiled at her, which meant two things. First, he wasn't mad. Second, he was happy to see her. She grinned back.

“It's good that you're back. I missed you,” as if that wasn't obvious from the fact that she came to visit almost as soon as she heard he was back. She rolled forward onto her toes, then back onto her heels, hardly able to keep still from the excitement, yet somehow able to keep from jumping up into his arms. She wasn't sure how he would feel about that, even if he was glad to see her, and she was getting a little old for that kind of thing.

“What happened to your ponytail? And what did you have to sort out? And why didn't you tell anyone you were going? Where did you go? And what made you leave?”

Katrina closed her mouth, pinching her lips between her teeth before the hundred other questions she had slipped out. He could only answer so many at once, and they were all important, so she didn't want him to forget any. So much had happened here since he had left. She could only assume that a lot had happened to him in that interval as well.

Hunter couldn’t help but smile. He was glad to see that she still liked him. When he decided to return he had no idea how people would react. “It’s a long story,” he said as he moved over to one of the sofas, “Best have a seat while I tell it.”

“Before I left I hid most of myself from you,” he explained, “I was an evil man who had hurt a lot of people. At the time I justified it with the belief that I had the right to do anything I wanted because no one could stop me. It turns out that I was wrong on both counts.” It was Calley of all people who’d managed to stop him. He’d clashed with Kaz, Abyss, Syn and others who he thought might be a threat but it turned out that it was his unexpected little spy who bested him.

“I needed to revaluate myself and best do it away from people. So I left the country and went to Tibet. I went to a temple there that’s I’d been to a hundred years before. They helped me change myself. I no longer need to drink blood or want to hurt people. I just want to help now. That’s why I opened this place, to help people.” He had no idea how she would react to being told the full story but she had a right to know. “One of the many things that changed in Tibet was my hair,” he said with a smile. The loss of the ponytail sort of a physical representation that he had changed.

Katrina made herself comfortable on the sofa, first taking off her shoes, then burying her feet in the crack between the cushions. It felt really nice after that long walk to not be standing any more, to have her poor little feet surrounded by plump softness. She gave a contented sigh.

She listened carefully first, letting all the information soak in. Some of it made perfect sense. Some of it seemed to be coming from way out in left field.

“How do you define evil?” She said it without any hint of suspicion. She just wanted to know. There were many shades of grey, and even Fausto, who had murdered someone, she wouldn't really consider evil. It was more like he had done an evil act, even though he still averaged out to good in the end. Hunter didn't seem evil either. He had sheltered people during the Registration Act, he had been a mentor to Katrina, he had helped organize the emancipation of hundreds of mutants... none of them seemed like evil acts.

Tibet... she had been there once, in a dream so real it still haunted her. She wondered if the real thing was anything at all like in her dream.

“Blood?” Katrina tilted her head. “I thought that it was that violet eyed boy that escaped from your lab that drank blood. He tried to eat me, but Calley helped me escape.” Was Hunter a vampire, too, and that boy had been his son, kind of? The little illusionist wrinkled her nose at the idea. Hunter being a vampire was about as plausible as him being 237 years old... or would it be 239 by now?

Katrina squinted at him, “I think your haircut makes you look a little older.” Maybe. Had he aged in two years? It was hard to tell. “I like it.”

“Helping people is a good thing. I've been trying to do that, too. It's a lot harder when you're fourteen, but I have been trying.” Thus far she had organized a friendly tournament to showcase mutant abilities used for non-violent reasons. And she had signed up for a mission to help clean up the city. She was taking small steps at a time. It would be awhile before she could do what she had tried in her dreams, to stop wars and halt plagues in their tracks and eventually bring about world peace.

“I murdered people for fun. Manipulated people around me to my own ends. Twisted them. Used them. I would have done the same to you had I not changed.” Much as he hated to admit it it was the truth. Hunter had been forming plans for using Katrina and her ability from the moment he met her. “I did things ever worse than that but I won’t tell you what those where.” He couldn’t tell a fourteen year old girl about things like that.

“Zelek was an experiment,” Hunter explained, “An attempt to replicate my powers in others. I’m afraid to say that it worked. Replacing his blood with mine and implanting an artificial heart Zelek was brought back from the dead. He was dead because I had torn his heart out.” Much as he hated telling someone as young as Katrina all this she deserved to know everything before deciding if she still wanted to see him.

“At your age you should focus on having fun and learning things,” he said with a smile, “There will be plenty of time when you are older to help people.” He was glad to see that Katrina was how he’d remembered her and he hadn’t had the chance to influence her to any great extent. Had he remained it was likely she would have undergone extensive spy training and possibly even an easy mission by now. It was good for everyone that he chose to leave,

That was a pretty good definition of evil, right there. Katrina wiggled her toes to make sure the couch was still real. It was. So were her toes. As much as she didn't want to believe what Hunter said, she believed that was real too.

That put her friends-who-were-murderers count up to three, that she knew of. Was she evil, too, that she knew of these things and did nothing about it? Well, not nothing... but close enough to it.

Hunter continued, his words were painted red with violence, but his lip turned up with distaste for what he had formerly done. At least, that's what it seemed like to the little fourteen year old. Was he actually and truly sorry he had done those things? Was he still trying to manipulate her now as he said he would have earlier? He seemed sorry, he seemed sincere, but for a person whose abilities were all about deception, Katrina was still unsure.

“What made you evil in the first place, and what made you good again? How do you know you are really good and you aren't fooling yourself?” And how was she supposed to know he wasn't fooling her? If someone was evil for a hundred years, how long would it take being good before the scale balanced back at neutral?

As for having fun and learning things, she was doing a fair bit of that, but it wasn't all she wanted to do. She had a limited amount of time to accomplish things, unlike some. If she started now with small steps, maybe by the time she was eighteen or twenty she would actually be able to make a real difference.

Maybe she could start by helping Hunter to help other people. He was already doing it a little bit, but maybe there was more. Her mind churned with ideas, but she waited to hear his answer first

“My powers required me to regularly take human blood,” Hunter said trying to explain how it all began, “Had they developed now it might have been different as I could have use blood banks, but four hundred years ago I had no choice but to take blood by force. My first kill was when I was a little younger than you are now. I wasn’t in control, just running on instinct, but I killed my best friend. When it was revealed what I was the people thought me a daemon. There were no words for mutant in the 1500s. Not knowing what I was I became the daemon that they all accused me of being.”

“With no one telling me I could stop, that I didn’t have to kill I just kept doing it. Over time I came to enjoy it.” He was disgusted by those words but they were the truth. “I don’t know if I’ve made a true change or if I am simply fooling myself but I know that I want to change. I want to make amends for what I did in the past. I might spend the rest of eternity trying to make amends and still find it’s not enough but I have to try.”

A single tear rolled down his cheek. Sitting here opposite Katrina he felt like the monster he was. How could he possibly make amends for everything he had done? But what choice did he have? He had to try.

Katrina saw his tear. Like most of the rest of the things in Hunter's apartment, it seemed real. She wriggled her toes in the couch again.

She thought about Calley; she could never kill her best friend, even if it was for her own survival. She was certain of that. It was very strange, though, to think that someone her age could kill. Then again, Fausto had only been fifteen and that was a year older than she was now.

She thought about the earlier comment about how she should be having fun and learning. If people her age could kill... then someone had to get a head start on trying to be good, too.

She wriggled her toes out of the couch cushions and shifted herself somewhat less-than-gracefully to the other side of the couch, using her patented make someone feel better technique of crawling into someone's lap. It would be a shame when she got too big to do it any more. She put her arms around Hunter's neck and her head on his shoulder in a childlike embrace.

She didn't say anything, because sometimes hugging is a better answer than words.

Hunter was thankful for Katrina’s embrace but didn’t feel that he deserved it. He simply hugger her back and rested his chin on the top of her head. While he didn’t make a sound or move tears began to roll down his cheeks. Being with someone as good and innocent as Katrina only put his monstrous nature into sharp relief.

As he closed his eyes memories flashed past, bloody and violent. Then one that stood out. Katherine, his darling Katherine. He’d stopped being a monster for her. For her he’d changed his ways and lived a peaceful life. He’d done it before, he would do so again.

They sat that way for moments that added into minutes. Even though he didn't move or make a sound, Katrina could tell he was crying. His heartbeat and breaths were faster, and there were droplets of moisture on her hair. These were no crocodile tears.

“I'll help you,” she whispered, “if you want my help.”