His comment on laws made Kiva frown, particularly due to his claim that he wasn't human. To her, all mutants were human. His story, however, made that maternal feeling rise again, that desire to comfort, and the desire to find those who had treated him poorly and knock sense into them. The fact that he'd only been like this three years made her wonder just how old he was. She knew some developed it later in life, but she still found herself scaling back her estimation of his age.

The revelation that he was blind, in hindsight, was not surprising, since he hadn't recognized her mutation. It also didn't bother her in the slightest. Why should it? She doubted that, even back before her mutation kicked in, she would have given much thought to it. Too bad she hadn't gotten the chance to meet Sylar those years ago.

She glanced at her wings, slightly, before speaking. "I've been like this around ten or eleven years, myself," she told him, figuring it was only fair to share her own experiences. "It happened all at once for me, over the course of a few minutes...Hurt a lot."

One of her clawed hands flexed as she remembered the pain. Even over a decade later, she still remembered laying there convulsing on the gym floor as the wings emerged from her back. She didn't normally admit that part of it, or how bad a state the transformation left her in afterward. "I might change more. Anything's possible..." She really, really hoped not, though.

Pushing the thought aside, she went on. "I don't pretend I'm ever going to be normal...but the restaurant I got that steak from? There's one guy, just one, who always volunteers to be my waiter, because he doesn't care how different folks like us are."

She could have told him about her little sister, or her boss, but that one stood out as the one to mention. After all, without that one guy, she wouldn't have been out tonight, or had food to offer. That had to mean something. To her, it was those people, the ones who didn't care or had the capacity to learn not to care, that made her make the effort not to hide.

Part of Sylar felt stupid for how he felt about his mutation when she'd lived with hers so much longer, but it was a small part, lost to his animal personality. "You had a worse change than mine. My change is slow, but has painful spurts when the plates grow." He again looked over his right hand, remembering the day when his hands changed and he gave up on normal life. The pain had been intense, a tearing sensation mixed with burning as his skin reformed and hardened into new shapes. However, after the changes his skin grew duller and colder.

"My change isn't just what you can see, I'm stronger, faster, hungrier than a person. Every month I grew into more of an animal. Do you feel it too? The loss of thought and emotion." As he spoke, Sylar remained emotionless, cementing his point. Sylar had been a boy once, with the same wants and needs as everybody else. But now, he'd grown into something so much more fierce and indomitable, but the loneliness never changed. He realized that, even an animal wants to be with it's kind, a lone wolf always missed it's pack, and he'd never had one.

"I can understand though, how one person can make it easier." He remembered the girl, that terribly frightened child who'd called him Boogeyman, and yet came to trust him, and held onto him as he returned her home, to the normal people, and yet he'd never taken it as a sign he could return. Perhaps he was simply too far gone, or perhaps he'd pushed himself away. Kiva made him wonder about a lot of things he'd taken as set in stone. "I wonder what became of the little girl." He spoke mostly to himself, probably creating alot of questions for Kiva, but only with that sentence did emotion enter Sylar's voice. A somber lonely voice, lost to the dark for three years.

Sylar pulled back the hood from his head, revealing long blood colored hair, scraggly and a mess, but he pulled it back, showing that he still had a mostly human face. His black spider webbed eyes focused on Kiva, and though they couldn't see her, her heat image, against a swathe of gray somehow made Sylar feel comfortable and human at the moment, even with his animal anxiety biting at his heels.

Loss of thought and emotion. The idea made Kiva feel chill, but she dared not let it show with a shiver. No, she wasn't like that. She was still a human on the inside. Her changes were a shell, an external defense mechanism. A prison. Her mutation had never reached her mind...

...Had it? She snarled. She growled. She was protective and possessive. Territorial.

That lonely voice when he mentioned a little girl was the final blow to shatter her heart, and she shoved her hands into her jean pockets, shutting her eyes for a moment. A little girl. She could more than believe that a little girl would be the person to accept him. Sorcha had just been a little girl when she'd changed. A little, five year old girl whose big sister had left for school in the morning normal, and come back a dragon. And all she'd done was ask if Kiva knew how to roar like the dragons in her storybook.

When he pulled back his hood and she saw that scraggly, red hair, her mouth twitched into a little, sad smile. She met his eyes, looking at those black veins running through them. Those definitely weren't human eyes, but they didn't bother her. "Heh...didn't know you were a redhead..." she commented, faintly. It was a silly thing to say, particularly to someone blind, but she couldn't help it. It just brought back more thoughts of her family, and strengthened that maternal feeling.

Kiva's own hair was jet black, contrasting sharply with her bronze, scaly skin, and she tucked a strand behind her ear as she shifted a little further into the alley again, into the dark. She slid down the wall she'd been leaning against and sat on the concrete ground; it was a strong show of trust, doing that, but she didn't consciously think about it. She sighed a little, looking away from Sylar and then back again. "To answer your question...I'm different, mentally, than I used to be, but it's been so many years, it's hard to tell how much of this is due to the nature of my mutation and how much isn't."

Her eyes flicked to her hands, and flexed the clawed digits, then met the other mutant's bizarre eyes again. "The thing is, we're more than just our natures. I was lucky, in a lot of ways. I couldn't even stand on my own after my change, from the pain...and someone was brave enough to help me to my feet."

She stretched her wings again, slightly. "The longer I've lived with this, the more people I've met who were willing to...try. Willing to understand. They're in a sea of judgemental idiots, but they're there."

Sylar had never known color, at least not like everybody else. He knew of reds, yellows, and oranges, to him they were variations of heat, not the perception of light. So he'd never seen his own hair before, but he wondered if red was a good color. "My mother once told me it was a similar color to a rose." His hair however was a dark red, matching the reddest of roses, but to most people the color could only match one thing, blood. He pulled his hair back, clearing the freed strands from his face and eyes. "Is red a good color?" He wondered aloud.

Perhaps mutation by nature changed a person's personality and nature, or maybe it was the way they were treated, but for Sylar, the loss of himself to his instincts was an every increasing fact, which he both accepted and feared. Instincts kept him alive, but if he ever lost himself, would being alive matter then? Too complex a thought, he let it slip away as he focused on his words with Kiva. "Perhaps after ten years like this, I simply won't remember what it was like to be human." Kiva seemed both similar to him, but reminded him of his conversation with Serena, mutants were still people, he'd learned that much. However, he still only felt like a person himself in their presence.

She said she'd met people, knew people who sided with her as she lived the life of a mutant, maybe she lived with other mutants like Serena had said she did. "My parents were there, when I changed. My mother called me a monster, so I've lived that way ever since." His voice had lost it's sense of sadness, as Sylar felt no great sadness over his parent's fear, it made sense to him even if it was cruel. However, his voice also held no anger or resentment, which might surprise Kiva, or anyone he spoke to about his past. "I met a mutant girl a few nights ago, Serena. She told me that she lived at a mansion with other mutants. Do you know of such a place?" He'd decided to check this mansion out, to meet the mutants who lived together and kept their humanity. He didn't know if he'd want to live there too, but he at least wanted to see his own kind, to see more of how they dealt with the same curse he had.

"It's my favourite colour." Sylar's wondering aloud triggered the near-automatic, but genuine, reply. It really was. She never wore it, since it clashed with her scales, but looking at some of the artwork she made could see the influence it and other warm colours had on her. She liked that comparison, too, to roses; she could see why someone would make it.

Talk of forgetting what is was like earned a quiet sigh. That hit close to home for her; Kiva sometimes stared into the mirror and tried to think about what she'd look like, who she'd be, if that one little gene hadn't rewritten her to its whims. It got harder and harder every time. The mention of his mother's reaction, however, made her force down the urge to growl and suddenly want to find this woman and start breaking bones. While always having been aware, on some level, that mutant children were often abandoned, to treat your own flesh and blood like that was so heavily against all of her instincts that she couldn't help the anger.

The question cooled her temper, for the moment, and made her blink in surprise. "The Mansion? I've heard of it, but I've never gone there. They're known mostly for taking in mutant children, and just protecting mutants in general and trying to promote tolerance." Kiva had a certain amount of respect for the place, and it showed in her tone, particularly when she added, "They do seem to have their heads on straight there. If I ever got into trouble, that's probably where I'd end up going."

Well, that's where she'd end up going if the trouble was a little above 'muscle through it on my own' and a little below 'run for the Canadian border at top speed,' at any rate. It was a fairly narrow window, but it existed.

Perhaps her comment would have made a normal person happy, but Sylar reacted rather bluntly to the comment. "Then I guess it's a good color." He didn't really understand the notion of favoring a color as he was blind, but he guessed it was similar to having a favorite flavor, or a favorite smell. Though he really had nothing favorite in his lifestyle, except maybe the taste of bottled soda. Sylar's tail came to rest on the ground, generally it swayed back and forth, but he was actually starting to feel comfortable talking to Kiva. He had enjoyed meeting Serena, and meeting a second mutant was easier for him after that brief encounter.

Almost everyone would react with anger to how Sylar was seen by his mother, except for him. Perhaps his instinctive based thoughts were a strength in dealing with the harshness of life, but he never really thought about his parents much anymore. So she knew of this place too, it must be a sincere home for mutants then. "Part of me wondered if such a place was too good to be true. But if you've heard of it, maybe it's a place worth seeing." He'd stockpile food on his next raid, enough to give him a night to check out the mansion without feeling hungry.

"I haven't been caught or killed yet, but sometimes I wonder what it'd be like to be with other mutants. I learned once that many predators are pack animals, maybe mutants need to stay together for the same reasons." Sylar however, had become quite used to his solitude, creating a weird anxiety about meeting or considering joining any type of group. Alone he could hide, and protect himself, but in a group he could have friends, and be protected. His heart wanted the latter, but his instincts screamed for the first choice. Seeing this mansion might clear his head enough to decide which path to allow himself to follow.

Kiva watched Sylar's tail rest on the ground, and she smiled. He may not have been reacting in a way that quite made sense to her more human-like mind, but that at least confirmed that she was having some kind of positive effect. It really was a cool-looking tail, too. His form, in general, appealed to her artistic side in its deadliness, but she tried her best to keep it to the back of her mind, since she sincerely doubted the kid would agree to posing for a sketch even if she'd had her art supplies with her.

She frowned at little at Sylar's use of the word 'yet,' but didn't comment on it, instead reacting to the rest of what he'd said. "A lot of animals group together, yeah. Even the ones who don't hunt together do tend to like company." She gave a little smile again as she added, "Like cats." It was a human instinct, too, but she wasn't sure how he'd respond to her pointing that out.

"I can see how it would seem too good to be true, though," she commented with a faint sigh. "Not a lot of areas have a high enough mutant population for a place like it to exist." She'd had options other than being shipped to the States if she had needed to be pulled out of public school those years ago back home, but such places were still few and far in between. Even some areas that might have the population might not have a tolerant enough atmosphere.

Sylar sat hunched over a bit, his arms resting on his knees, his form more relaxed than he normally ever was. For now his animal side rested, and his human side got to embrace Kiva's chat with him. Sylar didn't smile though, his face remaining mostly stoic, a characteristic that might make him a tad difficult to talk with, since he was often hard to read. Though his voice had grown softer and a bit friendlier as he spent more time talking to Kiva. He thought about the local cats who would follow him around, or congregate when he stopped above ground. He'd have to get some food for them next time he was out.

He wondered aloud. "So if you don't live with other mutants, how do you get by up here?" Sylar wasn't sure what kind of job a mutant could have, considering his own mutation made him adept mostly at breaking or killing things for food, a talent he didn't remember any career as wanting. And if she didn't live in hiding she probably didn't steal, so he felt curious. "I can't imagine most normal people wouldn't be afraid to work with mutants." Sylar was slowly accepting perhaps the surface was different than how he imagined it, but normal people scared easy, hated easy, and his own resentment lingered.

Sylar wasn't sure what he'd wanted to do with his life even as a kid, being blind limited a person quite a bit, but being a mutant must have made a job even harder to find and keep. At least for mutants like himself and Kiva, who were clearly monsters at a glance.

The inevitable question. If she didn't rely on other mutants, take the charity offered to her, how did she possibly survive? Kiva had heard it more than once in the years she'd lived here, and often it offended her, mostly because it was often uttered by the normal or normal-looking, with the implication that she was somehow lesser.

She remembered when she met Paige and she'd asked what it was like to be visible, saying she instead admired those that were and lived with it. Kiva hadn't been able to be mad at her for that, and for once had honestly answered the question. And now, looking at someone who had a very good reason to ask, she couldn't help but offer a little, tired smile. "It is hard, I won't lie. Hard to find a job, hard to find a place to live..."

She studied her claws. She tended to do that a lot, because they always seemed the biggest indicator of her difficulty with attempting to live a life as normal as she could manage. The scales and wings were bigger, flashier, but the claws could damage things and hurt people. "I work in a tattoo parlor. I wasn't the first mutant the guy who runs it met, so he wasn't afraid. He was willing to give me a chance, so I took it."

In other words, pure dumb luck. Story of her life, really. Her skill with the needles was something she'd earned, though, especially with her claws and the problems they presented. "Some people walk right back out the door again when they see me," she admitted. "But not everyone. And, well, like I said, New York has a high mutant population, so my being there makes other mutants feel welcome." Kiva was sure Sylar understood that well enough.

There were possibly other implications behind that question, however, and she shifted her wings idly as she added, "Generally, it's easier to get night-shift work and other jobs that don't involve working with a lot of non-mutants, though." She wasn't as strongly intertwined with the mutant community at large as some, but she did chat with people when she was tattooing them, and she picked up things like that.

Though, maybe she should get out there among other mutants more often...

Sylar had never been lucky enough to get charity, a local legend, a creature that his neighborhood viewed as both a monster, and a tale to tell, he'd had to spend his last three years forcibly carving out a living. All that kept him man instead of creature was the bits of humanity he clung onto, and those bits were quite happy to meet Kiva, someone who truly knew how it felt to be a physical mutant, to be a person wearing a monster's skin. Sylar didn't smile, but he did feel quite comfortable here, in fact he was a little joyous talking to Kiva. He'd never had friends as a normal person, but if other mutants were like Kiva, maybe he didn't have to spend an entire life without one.

"You've met a few people with open minds." He marveled at how Kiva managed to meet people who could look beyond her differences, his entire life had been filled with petty human beings. Part of him liked knowing there still existed people who weren't shallow. Tattoos? Sylar was confused for a moment, being blind it's not like he'd ever had interest in them, but he remembered what they were. "Oh, body art." He thought aloud, his eureka moment slightly endearing. "You draw things on skin right?" He wondered how difficult it was to draw with inhuman hands, his own claws made it difficult to be precise with anything that wasn't carving something to pieces.

Sylar wondered what her artwork looked like, he kind of wondered what any art looked like, but a mutant who'd been through hard ordeals must have had some good inspiration. "Are you a good artist?" Sylar's questions were tremendously blunt, but his voice was always sincere, he just didn't know how to word things properly. "I wonder what art looks like." He said aloud, his hands moving from his knees. Sylar often did bits of maintenance on his body when spending alot of time at rest, an instinctive behavior to keep his weapons in proper shape. He flexed and extended his left hand, scraping his right claw against his left, a cleaning and sharpening motion.

He looked down at his hands as he did it, even though he couldn't see exactly what he was doing. "I never had a job, too young, and well blind. I hear work isn't very fun, or at least that's what my Father used to say. He was..." Sylar stumbled on his words, he realized he couldn't really remember what his father did. He thought so little about his past that it was starting to fade from his memory. "I guess I don't know what he did, but he didn't like it...I think." Sylar felt a bit confused about his sudden fuzziness.

Kiva nodded a little, subconsciously, when Sylar described tattoos as drawing on skin. "Basically." If one wanted to get technical, the ink was injected under a layer of skin, but the end product was visible colour on the body part. The reminder that she was talking about artwork to a blind person made this mildly awkward, since he only had an abstract idea of what art even was.

His mention of his father, and his forgetting his father's profession, made her frown. He said he'd only been like this three years, right? Then again, three years could be a very long time depending on how you spent it, and Sylar had been spending it like an animal. She watched his claw-sharpening motions thoughtfully, letting her eyes flick to her own, smaller claws as she spoke, "A lot of jobs aren't too fun, no. I used to work in a store before I came to America, and that was...not fun."

Teenage visible mutant plus the average retail customer? It was a miracle she'd never outright roared in some idiot's face, particularly during the holidays. "I like my job at the parlor, though," she added, her smile pushing the frown aside. "Mostly because I love art. I...like to think I'm pretty good at it; I have to be careful when I grip things and move a little slower, but it works."

Kiva had had years of practice, though, if not always with needles. "I paint paintings sometimes, too. Not for money, though." she commented. "Sometimes of other mutants."

Sylar as a mutant, was a creature of the present. His mind rarely went back into his past, nor did he ever really think on his future past the next day or so. He'd never had the chance to have a job, and really it's not like a blind person can do the average jobs that most people do. He had been born handicapped, and that had stunted his entire life until his mutation. If he'd ever sat and thought on it, he might see the benefits of his x-gene, but not until he stopped living in a sewer and eating stolen food. Part of him wondered why a person would want art inscribed onto their flesh, but he figured being blind, he couldn't understand the pleasure of a picture like normal people did.

He shook his right hand as he finished grooming his left, and then switched, sharpening and cleaning the right hand. His right claw was more developed than his left, the plating on it a bit thicker and more skeletal. He realized she said she came to America, so she wasn't born here? He perked up for a second. "You weren't born here?" He wasn't uncomfortable with a foreigner, but he couldn't remember having met anybody not from America in his life, so he was kind of curious where Kiva came from. As the conversation moved forward, he felt a connection to Kiva grow, she had to deal with having claws, just like he did. Sylar's claws were made from a hard material, it took alot of the sensitivity in his hands away, and if hers were like his, he could imagine drawing would be very difficult.

"I'm glad you can do something you like. The feeling in my hands..." He stopped, lifting his right and kind of showing it off, turning it back and forth before him, then straight back to cleaning it. "Went down quite a bit as these grew in, they're like a casing, my old fingers locked inside. Alot harder to handle." He finished, though unlike Kiva, Sylar didn't normally need very compact or accurate hand movement. He spent most of his effort cutting things apart or smashing them, which was easy when you had claws sharper than knives.

"Do other mutants like being painted?" To be purposely put into a picture was hard for Sylar to process, his main goal was to always remain hidden and unnoticed. So being put into a portrait seemed entirely counter intuitive. But a portrait wasn't a picture, one was evidence, the other was art. Maybe being painted was an entirely different experience.

Kiva smiled a little when Sylar asked about her not being from here. It always did seem to catch people off guard, with her lack of a distinct accent. "I'm Canadian," she explained. "I moved here a few years ago." She wasn't going to tell him why unless he asked. She told him plenty about her, but she still wasn't going to automatically spell out every detail of her life story for him.

She tilted her head a little when Sylar talked about his claws, considering her own. They seemed pretty manageable in comparison. "Mine are like hooks," she explained. "They're meant for gripping things, but the kind of gripping where you sink in and leave holes, not delicate stuff." But, in ten years with a love of art, you figure things out. The way she curled her fingers and claws around things was still awkward, but it worked.

As for that last question, Kiva's wings shifted as she considered the answer. It would be easy to just tell him 'yes,' but that wasn't entirely true. "Some say no when I ask, out of discomfort or whatever other reason," she admitted. And, really, she hadn't asked all that many when it came down to it. "But...yeah, some really do. Sometimes it's nice to be appreciated for what makes us unique."

Kiva frowned, just a little. Tough, tattoo artist, biker chick, big and scaly Drake the mutant had been sitting here swapping stories with a poor kid who'd gotten among the worst hands he could have been given regarding how life had treated him, and she really wanted nothing more than pull him into a tight hug. She sighed a little, feeling words forming on her tongue that were about as heartfelt as she had ever cared to be with someone other than her sister.

"Y'know, I...I wish I'd been there. When your mutation first started changing you. To let you know you weren't alone..."

Having finished his grooming, Sylar returned to resting his hands on his knees as he spoke with Kiva. "Don't think I ever met anyone from Canada before. Though I don't meet people very often to begin with." He knew Canada was north of the States, and cold, but he couldn't remember much else from geography courses back in school. Sylar's claws were encased around his fingers, razor sharp implements that limited him from any sort of delicate work that wasn't chopping meat apart or climbing surfaces. He felt a bit jealous knowing she'd learned how to do use her's for something so precise.

"Mine are far too sharp to do anything like that. Though I can climb fairly well with them." Coupled with is superhuman strength, Sylar could easily pierce brick or concrete surfaces to create his own hand holds in building faces. A talent he'd grown to master over the past few years in the urban jungle and sewers. Sylar wasn't sure how he'd feel about being painted, other than slightly uncomfortable at knowing someone had an image of him. "I don't even know what I look like, but I think it would feel a bit odd knowing someone else had a portrait of me." He didn't assume she wanted to paint him, and he might even let her if she wanted to. But it would feel odd knowing an object held his image, and he'd never be able to observe it.

Sylar didn't assume he'd ever get pity or concern over his life, but when a mutant showed interest in him, he did kind of feel human again, sharing stories, and interacting like a person instead of a monster. He didn't smile, but his voice softened a bit after her statement. "Funny how life never gives us what we want, when we want it." His tail curled a bit at the tip and swayed. "But thank you, for the sentiment." He meant those words as well, which was rare for the blunt sewer dwelling teenager.