It was another lonely night for Emily. She wasn’t complaining. She had spent decades alone, but still had a cat or coon to talk to, even if they didn’t talk back. New York was a huge city. She had just left a spoken word performance and was headed in no particular direction. It was about three in the morning and the sleepless girl wondered where to go. Maybe she would go to one of the parks. But there had been a number of muggings in the one she was closest to. Did thugs scare Emily?

A clash and clatter shook her out of her thoughts. It seemed someone was trying to rob the jewelry store in front of her. Why hadn’t any alarms gone off? Maybe they were silent. Emily decided to investigate the situation. The girl would be the first to die in a horror movie.

“What are you doing in my store?!” She yelled at the gaping hole in front of the building. “I have a gun! The police are on their way! You better git!” So everything she said was a lie. Maybe the burglar would scurry off and Emily would have saved the day. Go Emily!

Sylar generally tried to break into corner stores or markets to hunt for food, but being blind sometimes made it hard to distinguish one building from another and could find Sylar smashing his way into a store that sold nothing of value. In this case, it seemed he'd stumbled into some place that just dealt in metal ornaments, jewelry. These things were entirely alien to the boy, his gender and lack of sight leaving no interest what so ever for shiny metal and rocks in the boy. The boy dropped a handful of necklaces and jewelry as he heard a sound from outside.

It was too early for cops to show, and the voice rang out like it was the owner of this little shop. The boy clicked his tongue and turn to step out the hole he'd made in the door way. His form crept forward from the shadow, his alien features slowly coming into the street and moonlight as the monstrous boy spoke. "Run little human, I want..."He stopped when he realized no one was standing before him. But he was sure the voice had come from right here, his face staring down at Emily but unable to see here with his thermal sight.

He tilted his head back and forth a bit, scanning for a signature, that familiar human shape blooming with red and orange warmth, but he found nothing. All that was out here was the same bluish gray opaque world he spent his life in. "Where did you go?" He mumbled to himself, before he realized something else about this area. His nose was picking up a very putrid smell, like an old corpse. It wasn't that someone just died, but something dead had been here or was here. What the heck was going on here? Meanwhile to Emily, Sylar might appear a very confused alien monster wearing a torn up hoodie and some jeans.

If Emily did such things, she would have gasped as the massive shape came out into the moonlight. Well, it wasn’t really massive. The thing in front of her was the same height as the girl with her heels. It seemed that the thing couldn’t see Emily, which took any fear that the girl had away. She took a few steps back. “Well looky here, bless your heart! You’re like a….well I don’t know what your like…”

The girl was aware the man in front of him could eviscerate her with the swipe of his claws. She moved back a few more feet. “What exactly are you, anyway?” She knew he was a mutant and that she was being rather rude. But hey, this guy was robbing a jewelry store. AND had called her a human. He was being rude first.

Sylar might be a little short in stature, but the armor plated flesh and tail often did most of the work for him when it came to intimidation. Intimidating a dead girl might prove more difficult though, especially when her cold flesh was bordering on invisible to the boy's eyes which only saw the world through it's heat. His ears however, were also powerful and could pinpoint the girl's voice immediately, letting him know whatever it was was standing some distance before him. Sylar pounced forward, landing where Emily had been just a moment before, the boy crouching low like some sort of alien.

He slowly lifted his head to look at where Emily was, though he couldn't quite see her, her body easily matching the ambient temperature around it, but the boy's sullen face hidden by crimson hair and his hoodie still looked for her. He growled a bit. "I can hear you..."He paused as his nose wrinkled, and the boy realized that putrid aroma was this person herself. "And lord can I smell you." He wasn't exactly sure what to make of this situation, but that long dead scent completely turned off the boy's usually dominant predatory mind.

His eyebrow wrinkled next as he stood up once more, revealing that he was quite the lithe man, almost feminine in stature. "What you haven't heard of New York's Boogeyman before? More importantly what are you, you smell awful." Sylar said, his voice flat and emotionless, the boy easily able to wear his mask against this dead girl. Either this person was wearing some sort of anti-Sylar camouflage, or she was a mutant. And Sylar hoped it was a mutant because someone walking around smelling like a corpse freaked out even Manhattan's own monster boy.

Emily wasn’t sure what to think of this man. His quick reflexes frightened her. He could gobble her up before she could even think of escape. But he was rude. Extremely rude. Even if you are a hideous monster, part human part black, scaly alien thing, doesn’t mean you can be obnoxious and…rude. She wanted to give him a piece of her mind. But he could shred her to pieces. And that was a horrible thought.

She had heard faint whispers of a monster that lived in the sewers. It fed on the alligator people that resided underneath New York City. It would steal children from their cribs. It would climb up to your window and watch you while you slept. It would hide in the shadows, waiting for you to make one..wrong…step. It would rip off your libs and eat them while you watched. And as you struggled for life, it would burrow into your chest and eat your still beating heart. “Er…I might have heard of you…”

Emily shrugged her shoulders. She thought of running, but had a feeling he could outrun her with a few long strides. “I am a mutant, thank you very much. And I have been dead for…awhile. A real lady doesn’t reveal her age.” She crossed her arms. “Some people have…mentioned that I have a slight odor. But I don’t smell.”

Sylar swayed back and forth a bit, like a cautious animal examining some human thing it'd never encountered before, sort of like a cat. He'd lean one way, and look towards Emily, but she'd be able to see he never actually looked "directly" at her, because to his eyes she matched the rest of the world, blending in just like another building in the city or a tree a midst a forest. His usual monstrous attitude lost and wasted against someone like Emily, Sylar seemed far more like a nervous teen than anything.

The tabloids loved to exaggerate the crimes Sylar was responsible for, his looks made him a great news monster. But in reality he was just a criminal, a thug who robbed stores for food and clothing. Now sure he may have taken a dog or two as well...for things best left unsaid, but poverty and hunger drive people to dark places. And the actual papers tended to ignore him, as he rarely left photo evidence or harmed anyone which made for poor news. Leaving the tabloids to turn him into a real Boogeyman, though he sort of enjoyed the infamy at times.

The girl was intimidated, though he couldn't see a temperature or smell any sweat, her voice was a bit shaky. Well it would make sense if she was a mutant, mutants came in literally every variety you couldn't even begin to imagine. So one with no temperature would be reasonable though whens he explained she was dead he sort of stopped for a moment. Dead? Like dead dead?

"You're dead?" He looked up towards her face, his ears able to pick up on where her voice was coming from, making the conversation only slightly more humane as a monster and a dead girl shared a dialogue. He wrinkled his nose again, trying to pick apart her scent. He didn't care much for dead things or carrion, even Sylar had limits you know. But her scent was just so old, her scent also lacked the usual accessory scents of rot or scavengers. She said she didn't smell, but Sylar could smell everything better than the normals and most muties.

"I can smell alot better than everyone else. And you smell lady. They just can't smell you, normals have weak noses." He said pulling back from her turning his head to look around. She'd found him in the midst of a robbery, but it seemed the cops hadn't shown up yet, leaving a bit more time for conversation with this odd dead girl.

“Yes. I believe the clinical term would be diseased, or whatever doctors say. My head and arms were cut off, but an old friend thought I died before that. My heart doesn’t beat, I don’t bleed, and don’t sleep or eat. But I exist…somehow.” It had been awhile since she had explained her mutation. Emily had spoken about it, but not with much detail. She felt that maybe this monstrous figure in front of her would be more understanding than some other people.

“I can’t smell anything. Or taste. So I apologize if my odor bothers you. But if you don’t like it so much, you should leave.” Emily put her hands on her hips and leaned forward just slightly. “You shouldn’t be here anyway, robbing and such. It…it’s wrong.” Emily knew that some people, mutants especially, might have to resort to stealing. Some statistics say that the largest homeless demographic were mutants. It was hard for them to find jobs and their own family would abandon them.

“If you need food or clothing, they have places for mutants to go. Why do you need jewelry anyway? Do you have a girlfriend or something? Are you selling them on the black market..or pawn shops?”

The sounds of sirens could be heard several blocks away. “I think that’s the police.” Emily was enjoying her conversation with the scaly, clawed mutant. Maybe she would follow him when he ran. She hoped he ran. If there was a standoff with the police, she would have to try to defuse the situation.

Sylar wasn't sure what to think of this encounter, such an odd mutant to meet. Unlike other normal looking mutants he'd met, this girl didn't entice his instincts at all. His animal senses wanted him to ignore the corpse before him, but his weaker human side could push harder and think about the ability to actually talk to someone without thinking how they taste or if they'd be afraid of his monstrous appearance and manner. "That's...so odd. It's like you aren't even here. No breath, no warmth. If you weren't talking right now I wouldn't even know you existed." He mumbled aloud, giving some hint that his senses might be off from a normal persons, but not revealing he was actually blind.

It wasn't so much that her odor bothered him, it was actually nice to have his appetite suppressed, but it might be odd if he tried to explain it too her. "Er don't worry about it, I spend a lot of time in the sewers so trust me, I've smelt far worse." The boy said in an oddly offensive attempt to apologize at saying she smelled. The girl then chided him over his breaking and entering, to which Sylar just responded flatly. "Oh that? This was an accident anyways, there isn't even any food in this place. I was just about to leave actually." He ignored her comment about it being wrong, since trying to explain a poverty stricken criminals life was pointless most of the time.

It seemed Emily had some ideas about how robbery worked, and maybe it was that way for some, but Sylar wasn't doing this out of greed. "Like I said, didn't realize it was a jewelry shop at first. I was looking for food, and..." He stopped when he heard the sirens in the distance, well it seemed his usual breathing time was up as the police would definitely want to get him over some jewelry break in. The girl heard it as well and brought it up. "Yeah that's definitely the police, which means I kind of have to bail. Coming dead girl?" He asked as he turned and made off for an alley. "Trust me, if you don't leave they'll question you too, everybody blames the mutie." He said offhandedly as he faded into the darkness of the alleyway.

It seemed that the mutant in front of her was trying to be more polite. That was good. Maybe he wasn’t as bad as Emily first thought. Did he just compare her to the smell to sewage? Er…hmm…

The alien boy disappeared into the shadows of the alleyway. Emily contemplated if she should follow the guy. The police wouldn’t think she had been a part of the burglary. Would they? She didn’t look like a mutant, but she was standing right there in front of the jewelry store.

Should she follow the man, though? He had trouble with his social skills, that was for sure. But did he do it on purpose? Emily guessed he didn’t have many friends. She followed the man into the shadows.

A scraping sound bounced off the alley walls. A man-hole lay open a few feet in front of her. If Emily hadn’t been paying attention, she would have fallen in. Did he go in there? He had said he spent a lot of time in the sewers. It looked like he had disappeared, so he must have headed down. The undead girl contemplated again if she should follow.

The sound of footsteps and voices made her decision. She quickly jumped into the sewer and covered the manhole. Gross. It was pitch-black. “Hello? Did you come down here Mr….whoever you are?”

Sylar had intended to drop down here and just sprint off like normal, but he could hear the dead girl's footsteps echoing after him. Guess she was going to take a trip in his sewers as well, which would normally bother Sylar, but this girl kind of slid under his usual radar. His instincts and senses didn't care about her, so he'd let it pass. Down here though was his territory, a world of darkness and cold.

She spoke into the empty tunnel, looking for Sylar. It was nice that the playing field was leveled down here, Emily was invisible to Sylar's thermal eyes, and down here he was practically invisible as well. The boy's natural instincts for scaring others though had kicked in, and he walked up behind Emily as she looked for him. "It's Sylar. And we should keep moving, usually takes a few blocks before they lose me." He stepped out from behind her and began walking down the tunnel, choosing to keep a human pace over the usual sprinters pace he could easily hold.

As Sylar walked the tunnels he knew so well, he chose to strike up some conversation given this rare chance to think so clearly. "So it must be pretty weird to be dead. Like do you even still eat?" He said, his voice rather childish and curious at this point, quite different to how his personality had started when they met up on the streets. "And watch your step down here. It's wet." He pointed out as it wasn't entirely obvious while down in a sewer.

You know what’s scary? Rats. Millions of them, covering a body and eating it. Their teeth can gnaw easily through bone. There would be nothing left. You know what sewers have millions of? Correct.

Emily imagined rats staring at her with beady, red eyes. In her mind, they couldn’t tell she was alive. She was a walking piece of meat. How easy would it be just to swarm her? She’d be gone seconds.

The girl jumped forward slightly when the voice came from behind her. “Oh my stars!” When she realized who it was, she calmed down and put her hand to her chest. “I apologize. You scared me. I thought you might be a rat come to eat my dead flesh.”

She began to walk behind the short man. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Sylar. Very…strong name. Sounds similar to scythe, strong, reliable tool.” Her heels echoes as they walked through the damp underground.

“I’ve been dead for a couple centuries, so I guess I’ve gotten used to it.” That was semi true. “No. I don’t eat. The food just sits in my stomach and rots, quite gross. I don’t sleep either. Gives me a lot of free time. That’s why I’m wandering the streets in the dead of night.” Emily still couldn’t see very well and she didn’t want to slip in her heels. She reached out to grab his shoulder to hold on to, but instead grabbed the protrusion on his shoulder blade. Instead of making it awkward, she held on like she meant to grab it. “I like your mutation. Rather unique. Do you change into something fully?”

Sylar chuckled just a bit when Emily spoke out in surprise at him. He couldn't really see the girl with his usual senses, but spooking a dead girl had a sort of ironic twist to it he thought. He spoke softly, his boyish voice not fitting at all with the creature that it came from when you saw him in the light. "No problem, I get that a lot." He said, stopping for a moment as she brought up rats, which were animals Sylar didn't really care for either. "Er the scaring part, not the rat part. Actually I scare the rats too now that I think about it." He'd gotten lost on some abstract thought before he continued along.

She complimented him on his name, something he hadn't heard much of, well every really. "I guess, I just always thought my Mother had an odd taste for names. Not too many Sylar's about ya know?" He realized he hadn't heard or asked for her name, so he continued to just refer to her as dead girl. More than a century? Sylar was meeting way too many "immortals" for his taste as of late, he'd met a crazy firebird awhile back who had claimed immortality too. Must be nice to just live forever, instead of turning into a monster. Though Sylar wouldn't enjoy the stink of death coming off himself all the time to be honest.
"So you're like immortal or something? Must be neat." He muttered as she continued, talking about the things she no longer needed.

While Sylar didn't care much for the idea of smelling of rot or never sleeping, the idea of never going hunger did hit him in the gut. Sylar's hunger was dangerous and mind numbing, like a drug that overtook his brain and made him crazy, he'd kill to never be hungry again. "It must be nice to never go hungry." The words were different than the rest of his speech, sad and envious of something that most people probably wouldn't be. However he quickly moved forward and went back to his somewhat boyish but emotionless tone.

He stopped briefly, jumping a bit himself as the girl grabbed a hold of his shoulder. While the armor dulled his sense of touch, Sylar could feel a cold grasp on his body, and his inability to sense it had surprised him, giving the girl a bit of vengeance in spooking him in return. He didn't shake her off or act upset though, after all he was probably the only person who could see down here. It was rare to have his mutation seen with interest or appreciation, especially since Sylar knew better.

His voice dropped down a bit, dipping into that sad tone again. "I will eventually..." He didn't want to risk her getting too curious about his mutation, so he tried to divert her by asking her name. "By the way, I don't think I asked for your name dead girl, got one?"

The girl was relieved when Sylar informed her rats were afraid of him. That did make sense. Emily wondered if he gave off some sort of smell that repelled animals. That would be very helpful for the dead girl.

Emily shrugged when he asked if she was immortal. “I guess you could call me that. I met a unicorn and a phoenix man once over hot beverages. They were immortal. The zombie movies make me think I can die by destroying my brain. But I haven’t tested it. Er, don’t get any ideas.” That was partially a joke. The young man seemed nice enough. Here in the dark, he was just like any other person she met. She was even beginning to like the guy, even if he had been extremely rude to her in the beginning. But what did she really know about him? There were dark rumors about the Boogeyman, but they could just be rumors. She had her own rumors floating around her own head back home. None of them were true. Maybe his weren’t either. People feared what they didn’t understand.

“It is nice to not go hungry, but I admit I’m jealous of eaters. Especially now, with so many foods I’ve never had. Have you ever eaten chocolate? People look so happy when they eat it. I can barely remember taste. Or smell. I miss those simple pleasures.” It must be hard to find food when you looked the way Sylar did. Emily wondered how many nights he went to sleep hungry. Yeah, it would be nice for him if he never needed food.

"I will eventually..." Well it seemed Emily struck a nerve…again.

“My name is Emily.” He seemed to not want to talk about his mutation. He wouldn’t be the first. “Do you live down here? I live at a mortuary and do odd jobs there. Buy flowers, sell coffins, things like that. Sorry if I talk your ear off. I’m alone a lot so it’s nice to talk to people when I can. Let me know if it bothers you.” Two second pause. “So it’s really nice at the mortuary. It’s owned by an older couple, in their seventies.”

The girl mentioned a phoenix, and that perked Sylar's attention for a moment. He had met a phoenix as well, or at least a fiery man who claimed he could become one and was a deity as well. Sylar had no interest in trying to destroy the girl, so instead simply asked about the phoenix. "I met a phoenix as well, or at least he said he was. Was he weird? Like a weird accent and goes on about being a God?" He wondered if Bennu was still about, professing his Godhood to random mutants as he went about whatever it was that odd man did.

Emily's unique set of physical traits was protecting her from any of those more "dangerous" rumors that floated around about Sylar. Sylar was a predator, of course he ate meat, but her scent wasn't that of freshly killed or dead, rather more like something stale. And his gut didn't care for that, and thus Sylar was able to keep his human mind dominant, a rarity for him.

Sylar held no love of his hunger, it was like a drug that stole his reason and ability to maintain control if he didn't constantly feed it. "I don't eat candy much." Sylar admitted, though he did enjoy sweet things, it's just that chocolate didn't fill you up much, unlike other various junk foods. "And I'm more of a meat eater myself..." He mumbled as he continued to walk down the tunnel, with Emily in tow clasped to his shoulder pad.

So her name was Emily, a normal enough name for a dead girl he thought. She asked about the sewers, which was a rare question for him actually. People usually assumed he lived down here, or simply crawled out of the shadows like some monster on command. "I used to, well I kind of still do. It's a lot easier for me to get around down here, but I crash at my bosses place during the day." The girl apologized for chatting so much, though Sylar didn't mind. "I don't mind, I don't get to talk much on account of how I look. Usually just a lot of screaming or crying, so feel free to talk." So the dead girl lived at a mortuary, that was some real comedy right there, though he didn't laugh. Instead he just commented in that same old voice.

"How fitting."

Emily was really enjoying this. It had been awhile since she had had a real conversation. She would talk with people, but it was usually one sided or the listener seemed uninterested. This was nice.

“No. The Phoenix Man I met was older, maybe in his forties. He was a gentleman. I wonder what ever happened to him… But your phoenix guy seems interesting. I never understood when mutants thought they were gods. There are so many of us, we’re almost not special anymore.”

Emily recalled the young man’s teeth. “I would say your fangs are more suited for meat eating. Do you cook it or do you eat it raw? I enjoyed raw clams once upon a time.”

“I don’t think you’re that scary. Sorry. I hope that doesn’t offend you. Yes, the claws, fangs, tail, and black scaly armor might be off-putting. But you seem really friendly to me. I’ve met a few people who have been scared of me. We are un-natural. A mutant who looks human but can control an element. Or a mutant with wings or some sort of were-animal. People almost find them normal. But we…” She was beginning to sound all philosophical. Emily didn’t like to think too deeply into her mutation. It was depressing.

“Hey! It’s really helpful that I work at a mortuary. The owner is very nice to glue my wounds together and he even showed me new makeup techniques that make me seem more alive. What do you do for your boss? Are you a hit-man?"