Hunter understood. Verdigris currently had a good thing going for her and her main focus now was in not screwing it up. Hunter himself had had a rough time of things when he developed his mutation at first but he had the power and lack of morals to change it fast at the expense of others. How things would have been different if he had valued human life back then?

“The advantage I have is that I have all the time in the world,” he replied with a smile, “Barring a great disaster Paris and Rome will still be there in fifty years and I can go travelling again to all my old hangouts. For now though running this helps me more than you know. I think I’ll probably spend a few years here at least.”

She nodded slowly. A few years in her time was a significant amount, but in his immortality it would hardly be any time at all. It was a strange concept. It was the same as having a day that simply dragged, then speaking to someone to who the same day moved too quickly. It was difficult to think about, like the universe, or infinity.

“That is probably a good thing, to have a place to stay for a time. Travelling around is all well and good, but it is good to have some stability as well... although, you probably already know that.”

It was surely impossible to spend over four hundred years running from place to place, never settling down for long, and if he had ‘hangouts’ surely he had stayed in one place (or places). She sipped her tea carefully, it was still a little strange, but it seemed to be growing on her.

If staying here helped him, then it was surely the right thing to do, making peace with people he had hurt and apologising for the mistakes he had made was an important step, but being able to forgive himself was a far greater and more difficult one, and if working in a big glass building made that easier, then it must have been the right place for him.

“Indeed,” Hunter replied taking another sip, “Having somewhere that you can call home after a long time travelling is as good as travelling itself. I own an myriad of properties around the globe so if I travel I’ll most likely have somewhere nearby where I can stay. Having your own house is always batter than staying in a hotel room I find.”

Some of the properties he owned he’d not been to in over a century but he had a cleaner for each who would come once a month and make sure all was in order. He doubted that a young lady like Verdigris owned her own place, even with her new job. She most likely rented or possibly lived in the Sanctuary or Mansion if she was a mutant. Her boss clearly was and was open to employees about it but that didn’t mean she was. Personally it didn’t matter to Hunter anymore than whether she had green eyes.

The Mansion, as far as Verdy was concerned, was far more like a home than a hotel. True there were many, many rooms, but the atmosphere was different, an air of permanency, rather than the urgency of moving from place-to-place in between checking in or out, so it seemed (to her at least) that the nodding she was doing was justified. The man’s age once again made her feel a little sea-sick, but with a gentle sip of her tea she was calm.

“So what have you been doing since you left?”

Because one couldn’t possibly spend two years away without doing something. Or maybe you could, if you had already done everything there was to do in four or so hundred years. What was one to do after one had ‘done it all’ as the saying went? As convenient as it would be sometimes to have more time on the earth she was fairly sure she got the better end of the deal. To have a limited time was to have a purpose, without a deadline (no pun intended) the urgency to complete tasks was lost. Much like last-minute studying for tests, or finishing projects the day before they are due.

“I mean, not that it’s any of my business or anything...”

Because it was rude to pry, and ruder to not excuse yourself when prying. An outright ‘none of your business’ was justified, in fact she found herself almost anticipating it, it would have been how she would have reacted.

“Not at all,” he said with a smile in answer to her unasked question of if it was ok to ask about what he had been up to for two years, “I headed straight for Tibet upon leaving New York. There was a monastery I knew of there a century or so ago. It is still there. I met the new master of the monastery and worked with him on personal issues. Ones that I had ignored for the majority of my very long life.”

“I also learned a lot about helping people as they helped me and once I had my issues sorted out,” or at least mostly sorted out Hunter added to himself privately, “I decided to make use of what I knew and came back here to offer my help to those who wanted it.”

~”Not at all.”

She flushed a little. She knew it was none of her business, she had even said so, he didn’t have to say it like that. She was just about to apologise when his smile and explanation stopped her. She had apparently misinterpreted. A monastery hey... with monks and things... interesting.

“That was nice of him, I suppose that’s what they do though...”

Ignoring problems was like ignoring ingrown toenails. They hurt, especially when you think about them, but its only once you have them dealt with that you realise how much pressure you’ve been under. An ingrown toenail for four-hundred years just sounded dangerous.

“So now you’re the monk of NYC?”

That was, she had to admit, quite a cool title, and from what she had seen of this not-quite-so-young-as-you-would-think man, it suited him. From the deep meaningful questions, to the butter tea which steamed gently in its little pot.

It was nicer of them that Verdigris knew. Upon his arrival Hunter had nearly killed one of the monks. However the two became firm friends as time passed. Not killing Anil had been the first step on a road that he was still walking.

“I’m sure that there are some other monks in New York,” he mused as he poured himself another cup and offered Verdigris the last of the tea, “but I don’t think many are quite as high profile as I am. Most won’t decide to run a spiritual self help clinic that is advertised around the city for example.” He smiled at the title ‘monk of New York’. It sounded a little like a tag line for one of those modern action movies.

Verdy nodded slowly as she accepted the tea, perhaps there were other monks in the city, there was one of just about everything else after all. None, however, had distributed fliers and invited one and all in for acceptance, talking and tea. At least not in her experience. Hunter verbally seconded her thoughts and she nodded and sipped at the tea.

“They helped you, now you’re helping others, it makes sense really, paying it forwards, as it were.”

Or was it backwards in his case because of his age? She wasn’t certain, but that didn’t seem quite right. An older person could pay it forwards to a younger, no matter how great the age gap. In Hunter’s case the gap just happened to be a little more substantial than usual.

“Sonething like that,” Hunter replied with a smile as he set down the now empty kettle, “If you don’t mind me asking are you a mutant? Your boss is and you know that I am so you clearly have no problem with them like some others in this city.” He remembered the lunch he had, or tried to have, with Meld yesterday.

“I’m just curious. If you’d rather not say that’s fine.” He’d been receiving a lot of mutant clients, which was understandable as an active X gene was a very easy way to unbalance your life even if everyone was accepting of the fact. Verdigris may be comfortable with mutants but that didn’t mean she was one. It mattered little to him whether she was or not. As he had said he was simply curious.

Verdy sipped her tea, it was a bit stronger now, as it was the end of the pot. He wanted to know if she was a mutant. He was, and so far he hadn't seemed to show any signs of hating anyone, especially not based on genetics.

"I am. Nah, I don't mind you asking, its pretty interesting knowing if other people are."

She grinned at the man, while her mutation wouldn't allow her to live indefinately it was cool enough, most mutations were she had found. It made sence that the mutations were of the 'cool' variety, seeing as they were a step on the evolutionary ladder, and if it had have been dangerous or excessively useless it would have bred out.

"I can fire small objects out of the palm of one hand." She smirked "When they wrote the clause about bearing arms I don't think they meant my kind, but it suits me fine."

Hunter arched an eyebrow at Verdigris and smiled. “I’ve known many mutants in my time,” he said, “and I’ve not met any with an ability close to yours. I did used to know one who could morph his hand into a gun but he was a machine like mutant. I assume that unlike many mutants you have your ability under control? After all you’ve not fired the cup across the room.”

It was nice to meet a mutant who had control of their power. He’d met several this week that he’d been working with to help control their powers, Andrea, Shana and Molly. Back when he formed the Kabal many of the mutants he had initially recruited had needed training. Truthfully he was probably one of the best people to train mutants who didn’t have a danger room. He had a wealth of experience on the matter hand had time and again shown results.

Verdy twirled the cup gently in between her fingers, there had been a time when she would have stressed about closing her hands around it, but over time she had managed to learn to control the spontaneous opening and closing of the portals.

“More or less. I can choose when the things come, but speed is always fixed at ‘fast’. But that’s not so bad really. When I first started my hands would open or close unbidden, shooting things all over the place.”

The opening of the input portal at first had been uncontrollable , it was how she had lost her fingernail that never grew back. When she had been living on the streets she had practised with different motions, much like spider-man in the movie with his webs. Finally she had discovered the specific muscles that needed tensing to create the correct response. It had all fallen into place after that, leading to her current control levels.

“I can imagine that being problematic,” Hunter replied, “I’ve known a few mutants who have had disastrous results with uncontrolled powers. For example I’m fairly certain that hurricane Katrina was initiated by a mutant.”

While he had never confirmed that Zephyr was the root cause of Katrina there was compelling evidence. After employing the man he had looked into his past and cross referencing his location with the weather records had confirmed he was in the vicinity of the origin point when the storm that would develop into Katrina formed.

“But you have it under control now which is good. I’ve trained many mutants how to control their powers over the years. It’s one of the services that I offer here in fact. It’s trickier now I can no longer copy abilities but I think I’ve learned enough now that I can train mutants without borrowing their power.” He couldn’t help but smile. Verdigris was bound to have questions now.

“Yeah, lots of things are actually related that don’t seem to be.”

She had found this out gradually, sometimes, things were not all that they seemed, sometimes they were far more, deeper, layers of truth. The thought seemed almost poetic, in a dark way. What was truth? And who on earth could be trusted? His explanation that he could help people with their mutations didn’t surprise her, in fact she had almost been expecting it, if he could do everything else, why not. One detail of his explanation confused her though.

“Copying and borrowing? I thought you would have been too busy living forever to have time for that”

It did sound a little far-fetched, although, who was to say he didn’t have another mutation, which activated after his first hundred years, or a mutation for every fifty... she had never heard of immortality in mutants (or anyone else) that she could recall, and who knew if there were other mutations for later in life. It made some sense.

((OOC: Please excuse any nonsense, on my way to bed and haven’t proof-read ))

Hunter couldn’t help but smile. He loved being cryptic and leaving people scratching their heads. “My powers are all linked to blood,” he explained to Verdigris, “My blood makes me immortal. The blood of others makes me stronger, faster, with sharper senses and I can heal from almost any wound. I also used to have some psychic abilities, telepathy and power mimicry, but I sacrificed them to curb my need for blood.”

There were a lot of details that Hunter had left out of his brief power recaps. Mainly the trail of corpses across five centuries. He had however not lied and would truthfully answer any questions that the girl might have. If what she heard frightened her and she wished to end her sessions with him then so be it. He had taught her enough that she would be alright. While he hoped that she would continue her sessions he would respect Verdigris’s wishes.