The rifle shook. One half of the country she now resided in called it an assault rifle, the other half called it a semi-automatic rifle. Politics were funny things. The spent round flew as she opened the chamber, secured it, and reached for the long barrel brush. A good sweep, the chamber snapped shut, and she readied another round. The 5.56x45mm round hit the 600 yard target a hair off center, and she repeated the process--nine more times. Although that was the last shot that hit the 600 yard target anything but dead center. The greyish-purple rifle was something she had put together herself using mostly parts of an AR-10 she'd picked up from a construction manager for a job to re-model the pool area for a resort hotel she owned. To ensure the rifling ran smooth, you worked it out. Ten shots was more than enough, in her own experience. 

When you're waiting on galactic transactions, you've got time for the little things, or so Helena Bertinelli was finding out. It was the first time in her life that she didn't have twenty plates spinning at the same time. The result of having to let go of business details to lieutenants, both legal and illegal. Other billionaires might party, or vacation, or chase some wild hair. Helena trained, and she did so the only way she knew how: fanatically. Melee, ranged, automotive, workouts engineered to make her as explosive and quick as possible while she considered genetic re-engineering, or some of the cellular energy enhancers that were so cutting edge they weren't illegal, they "didn't exist."

At night the Huntress stalked petty criminals. The largest "bust" she'd made was a large apartment she came across, believing she'd run across a human trafficking den. It was just a sex shop, the consensual kind--though that she didn't find out until she broke one of the girl's nose. Oops. The Huntress kept some women from being raped, kept a couple from being robbed as they walked home late from a bar, and saved two NYPD cops from a drugged out freak with a .44 pistol shoved in his pants. It cost the freak a few fingers, but the NYPD didn't seem to care about that after she approached from shadow, and high above, to explain her actions. 

The cops cursed her as a metahuman. It bothered her, but the Huntress wasn't talkative enough to correct them. She glared, she stalked, she pounced. "I did it. You're welcome," was all before she was gone quicker than she'd appeared in the first place. 

She heard the man approach, but she heard no internal alarms go off. The rifle might have had something to do with that. A quick look of bright brown eyes peeking just over the black matte frame of purple aviators and she noted the injury. Whatever it was. The man's gait was wrong, and you can't fake pain like he showed just when he took a few steps towards her after her last shot. It wasn't an easy read, and was more art than hard science, but it was a read she was certain of. What kind of man walked out of the back building of an outdoor gun range, shooting perches separated by concrete and earth, concrete finished black the floor for everything but the bad "wood" flooring in the front office. 

"Who taught you that?"

[i]He's amused.[/i] A crooked smile slowly stretched over her pale red lips, glossed but otherwise naked. The rifle was set down, and her body opened up to the tall man. [i]Italian?[/i] She thought he looked like it enough to entertain him for the moment. "My uncle."

He chuckled at it. The kind of chuckle that sounded like it wasn't used a lot, seemed to her. "What kind of uncle did you have lady?"

Her eyes swayed this way, then that, before back again to the Italian man with the height and the mystery injury, and even more mysterious origin coming from the back building. [i]Illegal deal? Special order? Bit of both for a friend of the range?[/i] She knew better than most all it took to get guns was money and the right projection. NRA loving Christian conservative just wanting to protect freedom and really sell it? Doors open at any gun show across the US. 

"An interesting kind." The crooked smile had twisted into a grin by the time she finished that answer. "I'm Helena."

"Fair enough, I guess." The chuckle came again, sounding like it came easier to him to her ears than the one before did. "Pete."

"Are you a liar, Pete?"

The grin hadn't budged from those glossed lips, small and subtle, but unfading even in the face of the transformation before her. The chuckles were gone for Pete. Something snapped, clicked, whirled and came to the man's mind. She had figured there was a primal cunning to the man, murderous and as capable as the US military could make someone as talented as this one. It reminded her of other snipers she'd met, even some assassins. Government created, their true skill determined by genetics and God's gifts, not training. Needed both, her uncle was fond of reminding her when she dared slack on the training. 

[i]You've got the blood, girl. Do you have the rest?[/i] 

Her life was vengeance and murder. It wasn't a fanatical obsession, it was a daily ritual. She ate on carefully engineered diets, her only hobby was business, her life's purpose the Huntress. There was little pleasure. Only the routine, the training, the planning, the preparing. Deep down Helena had a feeling Frank Castle knew what that was like. Maybe in another life they could talk about that. 

Finally, convinced to see just who the fuck this woman might be, he answered: "Not usally, no."

"Interesting qualifier, Frank."

His jaw set, his eyes narrowing just-so along the corners of his eyes. Anger came in look, tone, and posture. He felt threatened. Helena had to remind herself not to laugh out loud. She didn't need him shooting at her. "I know you? Who the fuck are you shooting like that, knowing my name?"

The grin long ago retreated, and nothing filled it's place. "People know who you are."

"The only kind of people who know my face--"

"--careful, Frank. I'm not them. I just have an interest in people capable of inflicting impressive amounts of damage."

This time, it was Frank Castle doing the grinning. A fact that left Helena feeling hesitant for a beat of her heart. "Oh yeah? Why's that?"

"Helps to be prepared, even for the unlikely. Like a face to face with the Punisher."

The second quickest thing she saw him do was turn and leave. The quickest thing she saw him do was smile.