"So, what's my blood showing?" Ace inquired mercilessly, for the fifth time in fifteen minutes. Hank huffed in annoyance, not sure for how much longer he could endure her looking over his shoulder at the test results slowly filing in on the computer screen. A little red warning sign in the corner of the program he was running, however, diverted his attention and he frowned. Interesting, and slightly unsettling.

"Well, for one, your genetic makeup is slightly different than ours. My computer think's you're a mutant, but it does not detect the x-gene. It is quite confused, actually." He did not need to look at her to know what her expression was like, and the reaction he had anticipated came very shortly after, but not in the way he had foreseen. She moved some papers to the side – well, at least she wasn't throwing them on the floor – and sat, actually sat on his desk! He could not resist growling, a hushed, throaty sound, but a growl nonetheless. It was his bloody desk!

But she did not move. Not an inch, she didn't even flinch. She just sent him a look that clearly told him that she had faced much worse than a growling blue furball.

"Alright, beastboy, that means your parallel dimension-theory has some backing, doesn't it?" She asked, sending him the most infuriating look, one eyebrow raised. He kept himself on a tight leash, hell bent on not giving in to her insistent attempts at pushing him over the edge. She was testing him, perhaps even without realising it herself, and he had passed her test several times over, but she continued to push the limits of his patience. Maybe she thought he needed to compensate for his furry look, and thus she drove him steadily further and further towards anger. Beastboy was only one of the nicknames she had already given him; in fact, she seemed worse than Logan when it came to that. At least he stuck with 'Furball'.

"Yes, it does offer some hard proof of that theorem." He said, turning his chair slightly to the side and taking off his glasses. He placed them beside the computer, and rested both hands in his lap. "It would seem that you have indeed crossed the pathway between two dimensions."

"That's not good." She frowned, her face tensing with some sort of instinctive worry. That was not exactly the reaction he had expected. He tilted his head slightly, and gave her an inquiring look. "And why is that?" He asked, his annoyance gone completely. This was a most interesting development on her case, and to tell the truth, she was beginning to intrigue him. Her reactions and actions showed a remarkably keen instinct and a will to listen to it, as a result she had quick reflexes and problem-solving. She was also, contrary to what one might think based on her language, in possession of a keen intellect. Not genius-level, and no more than average when it came to science, but she knew things about history and legend that he had never heard of before, and she remembered them as keenly as an encyclopaedia.

"If I made it, so can other things. Hell, that planebreaker could send all sorts of things after me. Skinchangers, demons, maybe even tricksters. And in this world there aren't any hunters besides me, you'll all be seriously screwed over." She leaned forward slightly, as if to underline the importance of her words. "Mind you, if he sends just one vampire or werewolf, even you mutant-people can't stop them from multiplying like freaking wildfire." She was genuinely concerned, but her tone was so matter-of-fact that it didn't really shine through. Was she perhaps… scared? She hid it well, if that was the case.

"They will be like a new plague, you mean?" Now that would be bad, that would be really bad. And if he understood her correctly, it would be-

"Yeah, a bloody living plague. That kills with stealth and looks like human beings. Hell, in the case of werewolves they are human beings. It's kinda heartbreaking to shoot them, but it has to be done." She casually looked away from him, but he noticed the slight downturn of the corners of her mouth. Sadness? Regret? He could do nothing but guess at her feelings, she hid them behind complicated layers of illogical reactions an expressions.

"I take it you have done so before?" He kept his eyes on her face, carefully observing her reactions. Yes, there it was again, the slight downwards curl of her mouth. It was such a small thing, really, but it made him want to comfort her, knowing all too well that she would reject that immediately.

"I eradicated a few, yes." She looked back at him, suddenly angered. Probably due to his questions, the subject seemed rather emotional to her. "Look, just leave it, okay? I don't wanna talk about it." He immediately regretted having made such an inquiry, she was clearly hardening up again, closing him out of whatever little bit of her true nature he had seen. Perhaps she was close to breaking? The trauma of finding herself in another world would surely weigh heavily upon her emotions. If he just pushed her a little further…

"And why is that? I want to understand." He caught her eyes in a fierce battle of wills for a moment, and then she broke.

"You can't understand, okay? You can't see them as they suddenly snap out of their transformation with a silver bullet in their chest. Listen, you don't want to understand. Got it? You're better off without even knowing any of this. Anyone would be." Her words started off as angry, but as she spoke of it, they became slightly blurred with sadness.

"What about you?" He kept eye contact, and his steady gaze did not waver for even a second, neither did his calm, serious voice. She sighed deeply, her lips pushed together in a thin line of determination. Determination for what? Not shedding a tear? She looked as though it would do her good to cry.

"I hunt the sons of bitches. I kill them so everyone doesn't have to know, it's what my family's always done, it's our lives for all those other lives that we save." Hell, she had given up trying to avoid answering his questions, maybe if she did he would finally bugger off and shut up about it. She hated it when people was fascinated about what she did. She wasn't some sacred warrior, and she wouldn't be romanticised or put in some glorified box.

"And it's worth it?"

She hesitated to answer that. She wasn't sure, if she had to answer as Ace, hell no. As a hunter, yes. For humanity, definitely yes. "In the big picture, yeah. The small one? Maybe not so much. But it's the big picture that counts."

"You sound like one of us…" Hank mumbled, glancing at the screen again. This conversation was clearly over, she had said what she was willing to say, for now. He would, however, not stop making inquiries. He was genuinely concerned for her mental health if she didn't start talking about the obviously traumatic things she had been through. "Test says you're in prime health." He said, forcing his words to be lighter in tone than he actually felt. She sent him the slightest cocky smile, seemingly all too eager to change the subject.

"Told you so."