Sylar's mutation wasn't as complex as some of his friends liked to think. The insect like armor, the razor sharp claws and the scorpions tail were all just symptoms of a more sinister inner demon, his hunger. Sylar's hunger was far darker than the usual urge that most people experienced. Even just one gurgle from his stomach lead the boy to start contemplating dark thoughts, and ever since he'd shed again his need for food had grown far stronger. Though Roach and Megan supplied his more taboo tastes with bits and pieces to keep him under control, the boy was never sated and he could no longer settle for scraps or snacks. So now he'd let his nose and instincts lead him to a greater catch, a food bank.

Sylar didn't really have any experience with food banks, since he'd always found his own food and avoided the heavily populated pieces of man's world, but tonight was different. Clad in a ragged hoodie and torn jeans the Boogeyman stared at the building he knew held the meal he wanted. His eyes couldn't perceive it as more than a large opaque blob, but his nose knew better, and his mind confirmed what he'd been observing for some time. This was a place where real food could be found, could be stolen, could be put to better use than feeding the humans. Though he'd always been scared of them, or at best not concerned with, his time with Roach was teaching Sylar to dislike those pink creatures for their hatred and issue with his own kind, visible mutants.

His tail swishing behind him as he made his way to a door in the back, Sylar took a few deep breaths before clenching one of his claws into a fist and smashing the door's handle in. It was a loud but quick moment, ruining the door and giving Sylar entry to the building, albeit not as stealthy as one might expect from a burglar. But Sylar wasn't a normal criminal, his strength and ferocity made quick work of jobs that would take normal humans far longer.

The boy quickly slid into the building and began looking for his meal, ready to grab however much he could hold or shove into his pocket before making a break for it. Sylar was used to the world of the night, those dark times when most humans sought the shelter of their homes for fear of his element, and for good reason. Shrouded in the dark like a comforting blanket, Sylar's monstrous human form, too thin to be large, but too armored and nightmarish to be human made him quite the sight, not to mention that large bladed tail that swished back and forth behind him, creating the image of living nightmare, a Predator on the hunt.

His nose guiding him to stores of food, Sylar looked for hearty things like meat and bread, or cans he could take and open later. His mind distracted with thoughts of food to quell the monster in his gut, his attention grew lax to anyone else who might be present within the building. "This place really does have better options than a corner store, twinkies got old real fast." The boy mumbled to himself as he started grabbing various things to take with him when he made his break back into the night.

She didn't hear anything off, but the food bank seemed extra spooky tonight for some reason.

Noel hid her yawn behind her hand and moseyed on toward her next checkpoint around the outside. She often worked nights, so it wasn't like she wasn't used to staying up late. It was just a really quiet shift and she didn't expect that to change.

The memorymancer checked the food bank doorknob. The church across the street owned this building and during business hours they gave out cans and shelf-stable food to whomever would sit through a little proselytization.

Scrape, scrape, scuffle.

Was that... the sound of cans being pulled off a shelf? No way. Noel stopped and listened carefully.

> "This place really does have better options than a corner store, twinkies got old real fast."

Ugh. She took a step away from the building and scanned for an obvious point of entry as she radioed in that someone had made an unauthorized entrance.

"You see the guy? Does he sound dangerous?"

"Nah. I'll be okay." It was just some hungry guy.

"We'll send someone out in a bit, then. Be careful."

She turned off her radio and touched the baton at her belt. She would have preferred the sword, but this was on the book civilian work. No swords allowed.

Noel got her keys and made plenty of noise opening the door. "I know you're in there. You're trespassing. Leave the food and clear out." She was giving him a head start. If it really was some hungry hobo then they'd scram with some needed food and she could just report it.

The soft echo of footsteps, the jingle of keys and then the click of a door. Someone else was intruding on Sylar's meal, and he didn't feel like getting caught up with some human before the police showed up. The boys in blue were one of the few things Sylar still respected about the human world, so it was time to put on his game face and scare the human off. An unearthly hiss emanated from his jaws as he turns to set his unusual eyes on her. She had figured some generic criminal had made his way into the bank to steal a meal, but Sylar was no mere criminal or even a mere man.

"You don't know what you're bumbling into human. Run. Now. Before my tastes turn from canned fruits to thoughts of meat." Sylar said those words, and part of him regretted them. The threats he put up were half real, half lies, trying to scare Noel away before he had to physically act against her. But even the lie of of a threat stirred his inner demons, the beast living in his gut suddenly active at the thought of meat. But he couldn't give into those thoughts, not against someone who was just doing their job or stumbling onto him by accident.

Unaware that this human was in fact a living lie detector who might get confused at the worlds of an alien predator that wanted her to run before he had the chance to give into the danger he could inflict upon her.

HOLY CRAP BUCKETS! Noel did her best not to jump out of her shoes when she heard that sound, but she did drop her keys and bobbled her radio. Usually she wasn't such a scaredy-cat, but who could go from completely comfortable and safe to getting hissed at without a little transition? She scrabbled around in the dark for the radio and clicked it back on just as the man... no, the mutant made his threat.

"Make that uhm- potential hostile? Mutant." Gulp. They said to clear out and wait for backup, but her keys were still in there somewhere. She didn't want to end up being completely useless. This was a paying job and she did have her pride. Kind of.

Besides. He didn't want to eat her, judging by the foul taste of that sort-of lie. Wait. That was only sort-of untrue?

Noel flipped on the lights, but they were warehouse-style lights that took a little time to warm up. Welp. Time to feel around on the ground for those keys.

"I'll state again that you're trespassing. You don't want to eat me... yet. So let's not make this ugly." Ah! Was that them? She grabbed at the first smooth and metallic-y thing she felt.

Sylar couldn't sense the truth behind a person's words like Noel could, but he could read the reactions of people far better than anyone he knew, because he had the sense of a predator. The spike in temperature as a person began to fear, the sound of the keys as they hit the floor dropped from a jumpy grasp. The smell of sweat and the pheromones of terror, all of it let Sylar read humans in a way no one else could, as the one creature above them on the food chain. Noel might not be terrified, but he'd gotten under her skin, the boy knew.

She was speaking to herself? Possibly some kind of radio or phone, which was a bad sign. Communication meant police, and Sylar wanted to avoid an all out brawl or worse, being shot at. Sylar turned towards the source of Noel's voice, his superior hearing easily picking up on the girl's movements. She spit out another warning, as if she could scare him off with the word trespassing, something of which Sylar had become quite skilled at, a second nature for a creature of the dark.

He sneered as he spoke. "The scary part is...that I kind of do." He said with that same eerie hiss he'd had earlier, the instinct to hunt kicking in as Sylar's body began to give into the feeling of hunger, his stomach even growling into the dark, a sickening alien gurgle just close enough to a human sound to be unnerving. "I warned you once, and that was more than enough. Leave me to eat, or I'll show you how scary I can really be." He said ferociously, his lips pulling tight on his fangs as he spoke, his tail pulling back as he figured out how he should handle the situation.

The truth of the matter was that Sylar didn't want to hurt anyone, part of him was still just a timid kid. But his time with Roach, Megan, and other "criminally" inclined mutants had given the boy the resolve he needed to act if he needed to. He didn't want to harm Noel, but the words wouldn't lie, he would if he felt he had to.

Sylar's eyes couldn't tell when a place was lit or not, so the moment it took for the old lights to warm up and begin to illuminate the dark didn't register to him. But the revelation of the lights as they revealed the black as night boy clad in blades and spikes, a monstrous barbed tail hanging in the air behind him, pocked stuffed with cans of food meant for the less fortunate did create a perfect image of how dangerous he could be.

This was the Boogeyman of New York, and he was dangerously real.

On her knees was not the place where Noel wanted to meet the boogeyman.

Nor were close quarters a real favorite of hers, but at least she could see him dimly now. Hearing those sounds without seeing what made them was far more terrifying. And now that she could see him, her fascination was battling back the fear.

Was he... some kind of bug? Maybe? That looked chitinous and was kind of cool. Cooler if it wasn't threatening her. Way better if she had a gun instead of a baton. She should maybe stop paying attention to the rules and just keep a real weapon on her at all times.

Noel stood and drew her baton and swung the metal rod out to its full length. It was the best she had.

She set her feet and her resolve. "This is your last warning. Backup is on the way." Just take your cans and leave already.

Though his skin was insectile, and his shape reptilian in a way, if you could compare Sylar to any creature it'd be a tiger or wolf, a powerful alpha predator, only instead of it's normal claws he was decked out in razor blades and hunting knives. But worse than the claws or teeth was the tail, like some nightmarish over sized scorpion that blade glinted maliciously whenever light hit it. But unknown to either Noel or Sylar himself was his newer ability, a venom produced in his gut and pumped out through his claws and tail blade, a nasty concoction that would slowly infect the air of a place as confined as this.

For now though, the threat Sylar posed would be more than enough to intimidate anyone who wasn't packing as much mutant heat as he was. The woman struck a pose as if brandishing a weapon, she was seriously going to try and stand her ground here? Sylar was losing his touch or this woman was utterly crazy, either way he didn't like not being in control, or at least not knowing he was in control of the situation. The boy took his own stance, his tail swaying back and forth like a cobra being charmed from it's vase, only this cobra was laced with a fear inducing venom and had a human's mind to control it's bite.

Sylar sneered at Noel as he pondered how best to end the situation. He could pounce the girl, a hard thrust into the floor or a wall should knock her out, or at least break her will. He could always just turn and run, though he wanted to take a bit more since he hadn't had the chance to eat enough yet. "Hope you called an army, I doubt any number of sheep can stop a wolf." Sylar was putting on his best game face, though in reality he was nervous. Who stood their ground against a local legend? He was a tabloid monster in the flesh and this woman was going to brawl with him with what was probably a club or pipe? Sylar could "see" a taser or a gun shot, but all he got off of Noel was some normal human trying to face off against a monster.

Was he missing something? Was this moment actually in her favor? Should he run? Running was generally the best option after all, you couldn't lose a fight you didn't start, and you couldn't get caught if you ran before the chase began. He didn't like her bravery, and it was messing with his scary monster mojo.

He flicked his tail out, smashing it into a shelf of cans and other foodstuffs, the metal and plastic no match for his strength as he bent the metal, and cut the supports, sending a number of items rolling out into the floor. "You sure you want to do this?" He spit out one final threat, his words sounding confident, but the truth of the matter being he was nervous and hadn't figured out what to do yet.

As the lights grew brighter and she could see more and more of the creature in front of her, Noel came to a solid resolution. No. Definitely not a bug. It didn't move like she expected. It was far more graceful. More raptoral.

She found her quiet place, the still before action when brave and stupid looked about the same. The memorymancer tried to think objectively about the creature. Avoiding the tail was the obvious number 1 priority. In her experience mutants that imitated nature did so in the deadliest ways possible. By that logic claws, too, were top of the list.

He swung his tail and smashed into a wall of cans. Okay. So the tail had done strength to it. Double avoidance then. She would have loved to stand there and stare him down like a badass, but cans were rolling about and she so hatred to see good food go to waste.

Noel scooped up a can and lobbed it as hard as she could at the creature's face. Range was a good thing here. "Quit wasting food!"

This was clearly the way to win friends and influence people-monster hybrids.

Depending on how keen Noel's eyes were, she might start picking up on some of the more interest aspects of Sylar...not including the whole alien monster thing, such as the fact that his response to her throwing a can was not the response anyone else would have made. His display of power had failed to scare her off, and instead she had readied herself for a fight, grabbing a can from the ground to throw at him. Sylar could see the movement as she picked it up, the swing of her arm as she threw it, but the can itself was kind of blurred into the rest of his amorphous world.

Rather than dodging the can, his body dropped down quickly, assuming an inhuman pose as he rushed forward towards her, his claws digging into the floor like it was dirt rather than tile or wood. He reacted like this because dropping low made it hard for humans to react to or face off against you, it was like being attacked from an impossible angle. The can missed, though he hadn't even dodged it on purpose, instead rushing forward to attack her.

Sylar's first move was almost always a pounce, similar to how big cats took down their prey, using power and weight to pin and defeat their opponent before they even had a chance. And though the boy didn't weight much, even with all that fleshy armor on, he was certainly powerful. Sylar was like taking all the might of a bear, and ferocity of a wolf, and cramming it into one lithe little androgynous boy's frame, and all of that was rushing to try and smash against Noel.

He'd knock her out and be gone before she could be of any use to the supposed backup she'd threatened him with earlier. "You're mine human!" The boy hissed shortly before leaping from the ground straight at her, claws pressed forward and light reflecting off his metallic fangs.

With the lights on and one opponent to occupy her sole focus, there was no way in hell he was surprising her just by dropping his weight and coming from an unusual angle. Noel'd fought with mutants of every shape, size, and skill set. She had countless memories to back up the idea that she did NOT want to get caught in this thing's claws.

What she didn't have was specific experience with this one.

He moved hella weird! His body, specifically, was what puzzled her. Every time she thought she had something figured out, it just wasn't so.

Rather than diving out of the way, as any sane person of human ability should have, Noel drove her baton with all her strength straight down as soon as that head was in reach. That puzzling body came with more mass than expected so she couldn't stop him dead in his launching pounce, but she did at least divert the mutant's momentum from hitting her mid-torso.

He slammed into her lower legs with enough force to clothes-line Noel's feet right out from underneath her.

And now, somehow, she was on top of him.

It seemed both mutants were reacting to one another in the opposite way they were expecting. Everyone ran from Sylar, everyone gave into the fear of being killed. After all, he was the creature above humans on the food chain, he was the Predator. He had expected a charge to paralyze the girl with fear, so instead they smashed into one another with all the force of his surprising weight and recklessness. A baton smashed down on him, missing his head barely to connect with the plate of armor on his shoulder, sending a painful thud into the flesh beneath, while Sylar's body knocked Noel to the ground, having missed his target the girl someone ended up atop him instead of the other way around.

He could easily have just flung her off, his physical strength surpassing a bear's easily, but instead in the confusion he defaulted to his most trusted appendage. He growled at the woman, in a mixture of rage and pain from being struck with a baton, though this was merely a distraction as the serpentine tail attached to Sylar's back coiled up to wrap around the girl, hoping to constrict rather than impale the girl, something that was within his power if she didn't pay attention to that venomous knife attached to the end of the tail.

"Are you stupid!? I'll kill you if you don't run!" He spit out at her in a hiss.

Ah frick! Ankles, ankles. Noel scrabbled against Sylar's loose clothing for a good hold, but she knew that riding the mutant was exactly where she did NOT want to be.

> "Are you stupid!? I'll kill you if you don't run!"

"Clearly you don't want to kill me." Noel fended off the tail that came at her with a fierce thwack of the baton, but it was hell on her balance. "You could have done it already." She tipped off of the back of the mutant and scrabbled away while keeping up some semblance of defense. This was getting ridiculous.

"Look. I don't want," or have the means, "to kill you. You don't want to kill me. My job is to keep you from wrecking the place, but that points moot. Why don't you just take what you can carry and leave already?"

The woman seemed to realize the folley of staying within Sylar's reach, as she quickly tumbled off and used her baton to defend against the serpent attached to Sylar's back. Her words began to blur as they made their way into Sylar's ears, the beast stirring and starting to dim his thoughts as the adrenaline took over his body. "You're wrong girl, the truth is that it wants to kill you. And if I do, this whole night is going to turn into a nightmare." Sylar's words were filled with an honest feeling of dread, because deep down that monster in his gut wanted to kill the girl and eat her. And if Sylar kept burning energy and getting drunk off adrenaline he'd truly become dangerous.

He needed to knock the girl out, grab all the food, and bail before she could taze him or find someone to help her contain him. He crept forward, his tail swinging behind him like an angry cobra, looking for a moment to strike. "I intend to leave here with plenty of food, but first I have to get rid of you." He hissed before stepping forward and spinning into a swing with his tail. If the blade could hit the girl flatly upside the head or in the gut she'd be knocked out and his problem would be solved. "Go down already!"

It? It!? The memorymancer didn't taste a lie. 'Oh great. I found one of those people so unhinged by their powers that they talk about them separately.' And even better, he still saw her as an obstacle even though she was practically GIVING HIM PERMISSION to loot the storehouse on the grounds she was supposed to be guarding.

Noel pushed herself to her feet again and held up her baton at the ready. Only this time, she really didn't want to do this.

Round 2. Ding, ding.

He hissed and spun. It was simple to turn her weapon over and use it along with her forearm to block the concussive blow, but again that bizarre anatomy confounded her. She kept the meat of the tail from hitting her body, but the stupid thing was flexible enough to keep curling around her block.

>"Go down already!"

He may have meant to hit her with the flat of his tail, but the momentum of his swing around her defenses meant that the blade of his tail impacted into her back point first. It wasn't terribly deep given the circumstances.

The moment seemed to hang frozen in time for the span of a breath. Then Noel grunted and shoved the tail away with all her strength which took that point right back out of her. Her other arm gripped the pepper spray from her belt and leveled the canister between them before she pulled the trigger.

He'd had his chance. "No."

Was it... getting hot in the store room? Noel aimed for the eyes mostly, but the mouth wasn't out of the question should he give her an opportunity. And once she was out of pepper spray the idea was to RUN like a little girl.

Sylar was getting seriously frustrated. Normally his raids went with little resistance, the monster mask doing most of the work to scare off the normals and leave him free to take whatever he wanted. His tail met with the girl's block, and he missed another chance to leave her knocked out though both were unaware what would come from that little cut Noel had taken to her back.

His tail was cast off, his body reeling the appendage back in as the woman made her counter attack to Sylar's aggression. Most people couldn't tell at a glance that Sylar was blind, mostly because of all the crazy monster parts he was adorned with, so the boy couldn't really tell what Noel was doing save for movement. She had grabbed pepper spray, an invention Sylar had little experience with though he was about to get more than a taste of the noxious compound. A blast of acidic mist hit him directly in the face, his hood and hair catching some, but plenty of it hitting his mutated eyes and causing an immediate reaction as his flesh cracked and bubbled in pain.

The girl's curt response was lost within the monstrous howl that escaped Sylar's throat as the pain took over. He mumbled some various obscenities as his claws reached up to clutch his face. His tail thrashed about behind him, smashing and knocking over anything still standing giving Noel plenty of time to escape in the chaos.

However she'd find herself in a seriously bad position soon. She'd been drawing Sylar's dark side out, and the burning pain in his eyes would leave the boy murderously mad and confused. But more important was the chemical reaction taking place within her body.

A dangerous toxin had begun to flow throughout her system, and it'd make surviving a night with Sylar a heck of a lot harder when it came to fruition.

Sylar tried to look up, his thermal vision a swathe of painful red leaving him effectively blind once more. "I'm going to rip you apart you...!" Sylar threw out a few more adult phrases, but his voice was devolving into a swathe of angry growls and hisses, his anger having boiled over along with the pain in his face.