Bennu was certainly no gentleman, and Sylar's lack of vision made judging age difficult, but it seemed their was more than one phoenix around. This sort of negated the whole God argument as well, though Sylar kind of wondered about that. After all, if you were immortal, or absurdly powerful you might as well be a God right? You might even consider Sylar a sort of deity simply based on how terrified he made most people. Though he didn't think so.

"It's probably easy to believe you're a God when you're twice as powerful as everyone else. Especially if you're immortal too." Sylar said with a shrug, the boy didn't care much about the idea of divinity, considering his acquired atheism. "Bennu was...unique to say the least. He taught me a good lesson too, but he was no gentleman." Sylar said with a soft chuckle as they continued deeper into the envenomed labyrinth Sylar ruled over.

She asked if he ate his meat raw or cooked, which made Sylar cringe a bit internally as he thought of the various things he'd eaten before, both cook and raw. He replied with a deadpan voice. "I just eat." A fatally simple sentence.

Sylar nearly laughed as the girl said he wasn't that scary, as if to negate the life he'd lived for years now. She just didn't know, her power made her slip safely beneath Sylar's monster, saving her from the terror he could inflict. "You just haven't seen the monster. Come back with a heart beat, and you won't get to talk to me again." He said coldly, the statement oddly threatening considering how friendly Sylar had become in the past few minutes. Sylar didn't want to be scary, it was his instincts and hunger that made him so, every other living creature brought out the worst in him, a mixture of rage and hunger, tempered with fear, like a maelstrom of violence packed into one androgynous little package.

Sylar stopped abruptly for a second when she mentioned the term "hit-man", Sylar didn't like to think of himself as one, or ever being one. But he knew better, and the fact that she'd made a guess so close bothered him and made him wonder if Roach would get upset at him for being too friendly with a stranger. His tension dissipated though as he responded to her. "No, I'm not a murderer." Somehow that sentence felt flat, mostly because Sylar knew the truth as he remembered the man he'd gutted on his first day with Roach. "I'm a guard dog I guess. I keep my friend safe by scaring off anyone with the wrong idea."

He kept moving to try and avoid further explanation about his occupation, instead focusing on her. "How about you, how's the dead girl end up working for a mortuary?"

Emily waved away the comment about mutants being gods. Sure, there were powerful mutants. And maybe in uncivilized societies without advanced science, they could be considered such. But Emily knew better. Mutants were just people with gifts. Nothing more, nothing less. And these gifts were handed down by the one, true Supreme Being. To think otherwise would be blasphemous. “He taught you a lesson? Like algebra? Or did he beat you up?” She chuckled a little.

From the way Sylar spoke about eating and the fear that people had for him, she wondered if he regretted his mutation. “You should see how people react when I walk around without my head on. You got claws and a sword-tail, sure. But you’re a new monster. Human kind has feared the dead since the beginning. I’m just lucky I can hide my mutation most of the time.” Emily wanted to ask him his feelings about his mutation, but she didn’t even know her own feelings on the matter.

It was a blessing, wasn’t it? To live forever? To not feel pain or need to eat or sleep? But it was so lonely. You couldn’t let people get close. Physically or into your heart. Ugh! Emily was being depressing again. No time for that. Life was too long to revel in sadness.

It was kind of a joke when Emily asked if he was a hit-man. The tone of Sylar’s voice showed she probably hit another nerve. Why did she keep asking bad questions? “I’m glad your looks helped you get a job.”

Emily listened to the young man’s question. “I actually went there to find a job. What better place for a dead girl to work then with other dead? I revealed my mutation and the owner found it fascinating. We worked on how to do my makeup. A large piece of metal went through my torso once and he was able to make it look like it never happened. He’s an artist really.”

In front of them, Emily began to hear the rush of water getting louder. “Where are we going anyway? Are we close? It feels like we’ve been walking for awhile.”

An amusing thought, Bennu trying to teach an actual lesson rather than just going on about his own assumed divinity. "No, he just helped me realize something about fear." Sylar responded, avoiding going into the topic. The last thing he felt like explaining was this odd system of fear he lived with, scaring the heck out of everyone else and being so afraid himself, it was easier to just continue on. Sylar couldn't really envision how a headless person would look thanks to his lack of eye sight, but he certainly knew it'd bother all the normals.

"That'd be some party trick." He said, and he realized that while he was unique, a new monster as she said, he also had a resemblance to something else that humanity had always been worried about. What was truly scary as the dark? The unknown? "I'm not sure being a new monster is any better than being an old one? Humans all tend to be afraid of the dark, and that's where I'm from." He explained, though the girl might have guessed that the shadows were his domain from his black coloration and ability to navigate down here in the darkness.

Well if you wanted to hide, doing it in plain sight might be really clever. "You were lucky to meet a nice human, most of them aren't so nice." Sylar's experience mostly came from people being terrified of the venomous monster staring at them from the dark, a childhood fear made real by modern genetics. The idea of having her guts split open and sewed back shut was actually enough to bother Sylar for once.

"Not really an art form I'd like to see." He mumbled as the girl pointed out that they'd been wandering for a bit now. And Sylar realized, oh right, she wasn't apart of his world. He'd been so distracted by talking to empty space that he'd forgotten someone was actually there where he couldn't see. Was this a really bad sign for his sanity? He dropped that thought and explained where they were.

"Er sorry, I kind of got distracted. We're coming to a junction, where all the water from various blocks pools together." He turned and pointed down one of the tunnels, a gesture that was mostly meaningless, though the junctions tended to have some lighting as there was usually a service entrance around. "Depending on where you want to go, these tunnels lead towards other blocks, and junctions usually have a ladder themselves." Sylar tended to avoid junctions during the day, these were the few areas where humans still had to come down for work, and even Sylar's presence couldn't keep them away from maintaining their water system.

Emily frowned when Sylar said they were coming to a junction. The girl wasn’t ready to part with her new acquaintance. She had no other matters to attend to, other than a shower. Yes, she would definitely need a shower.

“You know what I fear? Being buried alive and not being able to escape. And maggots and other insects find their way to me and there’s nothing I can do about it. I would be eaten alive, but I wouldn’t feel it, just hear it. I think that makes it extra creepy. It would take months.” Emily shuddered at the thought. “It’s healthy to have fear. Without it, humans would have gone extinct centuries ago. It does stink that they fear us, but what else can we do. Maybe we could educate them. Maybe go to schools and do an educational presentation.”

Emily highly doubted Sylar would do such a thing. She giggled at the thought of him in glasses and a tie, giving a powerpoint on Mutants Are Friends. She pictured him and the children singing songs in a circle. Adorable.

“Which way are you headed? Do you want me to get you some food? You’re probably hungry.”

It took a lot to get to Sylar, after all he was a sewer dwelling psuedo-cannibal. But hearing the dead girl explain her fear of being devoured by rodents was just enough to cause the boy to stare at her with his useless eyes. "And I thought I was dark..." He mumbled before trying to move the conversation along and avoid anymore unwanted fear discussion. "Fear isn't an excuse for stupidity...or evil. It'd be nice if they'd try to understand us. But I won't hold my breath...and I guess you can't." He said off-handedly, remembering the person he was talking too didn't really need to care about his opinion on normals.

With a small amount of light, Emily could at least see Sylar again, a dirty boy clad in baggy clothes and at least half of him was covered in an alien growth of armor and flesh. Finished pointing, the girl asked which way he'd go. He tilted his head a bit, odd that she'd be curious about where he was going, generally people just wanted to go the exact opposite direction that Sylar was going. "Well it's still pretty early for me, I'll probably stay out in the city till I find a place to rob." He was hungry, and if the girl was offering this would be a good chance to hit up another mutant for some free food. "I mean if you don't mind, it'd help me out. Breaking into places wastes a lot of time and energy." He said jokingly, in reality he was so powerful anything lower than a bank was litter more than paper to him.

“I can actually take in air in my lungs and expel it. It helps when I swim. Makes me more buoyant to be filled with air. Also it helps with the talking. Which I do a lot of.”

Emily smiled. If there was one thing she loved, it was getting people food. Of course, she preferred to make it herself, but retrieving food was almost just as good. “Is there a place I could go above us that’s open this late? And what would you enjoy? Are you strictly carnivorous or would you like a salad?” Emily would try to fill his stomach. Then maybe he wouldn’t have to rob anywhere tonight.

The girl looked at Sylar in the dim light. Emily realized she was still holding on to his shoulder thing and put her hand down. “Do you feel in these, or is it some sort of armor-exoskeleton thing?” She ran her finger over some of the black on his arm. She tried to pinch it, but it wouldn't give.

This girl...was unique. Generally Sylar's jokes felt horribly flat, or got no response, and here she was giving him an entirely serious retort. He'd have to introduce her to Roach sometime, he'd get a big kick out of her he thought. Though she was so friendly, Sylar's own lack of smiling might be off putting to the girl as they continued to converse. She mentioned going to a shop for food, and Sylar realized she probably didn't get that he was blind, and thus very bad at telling what time it was down here.

"Er I'm not really good at telling time, considering I spend most of my time down here in the sewer...well that and being blind doesn't help either."

He revealed his handicap, though in reality it could barely be considered one when you put it against thermal vision, and the senses of hearing and smell to put a blood hound to shame. "And I'll eat anything really, I just prefer meat." Nothing settled Sylar's hunger as much as meat did, which was kind of a problem considering how powerful his hunger was, and how weak his will power was when it came to what is and isn't food.

The girl released his shoulder pad, and then went on to touch his arm, rubbing her hand against the hardened exoskeleton. "They're stuck to my muscles I think, so I can't really feel if you touch them. But push on them, or hit them and I feel the pressure inside." He explained, he wasn't exactly sure what the armor was either, but the way it grew under his skin,and then ruptured out of it, he imagined they were some kind of exoskeleton, like a bug. Or maybe really really thick leather?

"It grows under my skin for awhile, and then when I shed there's more of it. It's not a fun mutant power." He said seriously, though being dead might not be as fun as Sylar would imagine either?

“Great. I’ll head up and get you something.” Emily found a ladder and began to climb upward. “Now don’t go anywhere.” She lifted the sewer cover and peaked outside. “I know where we are. I’ll be back soon.” Making sure no one was around, she slipped out.

There was a twenty-four hour walk-up burger place about a block from where Emily stood. She walked away from others, sure that she smelled of sewage. After waiting behind three people and a couple, the girl ordered five double hamburgers, ketchup only. Emily wasn’t sure how much a black-armored mutant ate. She decided to get two hotdogs, just in case. They gave her a plastic bag to put everything in.

Emily made her way back to the man hole. Nothing exciting happened on the way.

The man hole was harder to lift than to push up. It was also slightly difficult to go back down the ladder with a bag of food. “Sylar? I got you five hamburgers and two hotdogs. I hope I got enough food.” She reached out and handed the plastic bag over. "Go ahead and eat. It won't bother me."

Sylar watched as the girl walked away a bit and started her way up the ladder, part of him felt a bit sad to see her go, even though he knew she'd probably be back soon enough. It was rare he could interact without his gut flushing his mind with violent or aggressive thoughts, even when he was with friends it was hard not to see them as pieces of meat. But this girl provoked nothing from his inner beast, it's taste only concerned with raw fresh meat, not something so long dead.

The boy crouched down onto his heels, his size so small in this position that you might miss him if you didn't know any better, but it was comfortable for him, his unique body possessing an inhuman amount of agility and limberness. Hearing the sound of a manhole, coupled with footsteps which held no heat, Sylar knew it was the girl dropping back down into the sewer.

It was odd to once again be unable to see someone, even if that thought was terribly ironic for a blind person, but the girl was like a ghost to him, only her voice and footsteps, coupled with the faint smell of death told Sylar where she was, if she were to say remain totally still, he'd struggle to pinpoint her location down here.

He stood up once more and walked over to her. "That was quick, or at least quicker than having to break into a place I suppose." He mused as he reached out a clawed hand to take the food from her, which he then swiftly and rudely proceeded to snarf down like a hungry child. Sylar's hands made delicate work difficult, and unwrapping the paper from around a hamburger was both delicate and annoying, so instead the mutant literally bit through and devoured the paper along with the meal, showing how much more awkward he could still be.

Breathing only between sandwiches, his gut was deliriously happy to get fresh fast food, rather than stealing it or waiting for it to be thrown away. She hoped it was enough food, and part of Sylar was tempted to speak up about how it was never enough for him, but the hot dogs were far more important than speaking. "Freaking fantastic, thanks again." He managed in between hot dogs, his gut still in control as his mind had to wait it's turn.

Emily looked in amazement as Sylar scarfed down his food. Her mouth was literally agape. “Should…should I get you some more?” It didn’t seem that the boy had heard her. He was too engulfed in the fast food. “You know I’ve never had a hamburger or a hotdog before. In fact beef was a rare delicacy. Now you can find it anywhere. It’s actually amazing how easy it is to find whatever type of food you want, from any nation or region, in this lovely City of New York.”

It didn’t take long at all for the food to be gone. Emily beamed at the gratitude. “My pleasure.” If her blood flowed, she would have blushed.

“What were we talking about before I left?” She thought for a moment. “Oh right, your skin turning into unfeeling armor. I don’t feel anything either, just pressure. Kind of stinks. I mean, it’s great if I was in fights and stuff. But I miss the warmth and comfort of human touch.” She shrugged. “Eh, it’s been centuries. I’ve pretty much forgotten what it’s like.”

“So…What do you like to do for fun?” Emily never knew when it was appropriate to leave. She had been told a few times that she tends to overstay her welcome. If the girl had her way, she’d follow Sylar home. Being dead was lonely.

Sylar's eating habits were nothing short of ferocious, and though he always ate like he'd been starving to death, even with a steady food supply the hunger never seemed to go away. It was worse actually, as if having food just made him even more ravenous, that predator in his gut just going mad like a shark in bloody water. "This is plenty, I'm just always hungry...always." He said with a solemn tone before listening to the girl explain some of the unique aspect to being immortal.

Just how old was she he wondered. "I hear all the red meat is actually a problem in New York, makes the normals fat." Sylar pointed out that such a thing wasn't a problem for him, his metabolism or perhaps his mutation seemed to consume so much of the food he ate that he was always lithe at worst, nearly skeletal when truly starved.

She tried to remember their conversation from before, and Sylar simply shrugged as he began to clean one of his claws, like some kind of monstrous cat. Not like there were sinks down here or any clean water at all to clean yourself. She talked about missing human contact, something Sylar wasn't so fond of. As a boy his human contact consisted of being bullied and picked on, as a mutant, he couldn't feel anything he touched, his fingers locked away beneath natural weapons. "I don't know what it's like to live that long. But I can't feel anything either, the claws are made of the same thing as my shoulders." He flexed his claw a bit, feeling his muscle and flesh beneath the plating, but unable to even feel the stagnant air if he swished his hand back and forth.

The next question was entirely out of Sylar's usual comfort zone. What did he do for fun? He tilted his head, like a child or dog hearing a sound it had no idea how to comprehend or understand. "Er fun? Do I have fun?" He was a sewer dwelling closet cannibal mutant criminal. Was fun even a word for him? Well he guessed spooking normals was kind of fun, though that was only because he had to live with being terrifying.
"Er I guess scaring normal people is kinda funny. But there's not much I can do to have fun, can't even read anymore cause of the hands." He said, looking at his hands again.

Emily watched the mutant as he spoke about always being hungry. That must be terrible. From what she remembered, being hungry was a horrible feeling. Like an itch you couldn’t scratch. “People are more portly than when I was younger.” She continued to watch him as he cleaned his claws, wondering if he was trying to get the last taste of fast-food off of them. “I think your claws are pretty impressive. And you seem pretty strong, too.” That sounded flirtier than she meant it to. “I mean if I could choose a mutation, super-strength isn’t so bad. Being immortal isn’t very impressive. I guess I’d be good at combat, but my wounds don’t heal. I’m too vain to want to be in a fight. You seem like you’d be good to have around if a brawl were to occur.”

Emily made a sad face at Sylar’s response to having fun. “I do enjoy reading. Classics, Shakespeare, all of those. And I’ve done a bit of reading. If you want, I can always read to you. People tell me I’m a good story-teller.” She sat there for a moment, wondering if the man really enjoyed scaring people. He probably had a difficult childhood and wondered when his mutation manifested. “My mutation didn’t show up until after I had died. I use to wonder what would have happened if I died of old age or very violently. I think I lucked out on how I died, however that was.”

She crouched down next to the mutant man. The girl’s legs wouldn’t tire from this position. She never tired. “Do you have friends you spend time with, like that guy you body-guard for? I really have one person I go out with. She’s a non-mutant. We work together.”

Hunger was a normal feeling for most creatures, a means for the body to tell you to find nutrients, but Sylar's hunger was different. No matter what he ate, it never seemed to fill his belly...save for one thing, but he couldn't eat that, to eat the taboo was to give into the monster and let it all go. Sylar was a lithe creature, almost femininely so, but the average New Yorker was certainly a bit pudgy. "Too much fast food I think." He mumbled between licking the claws on his fingers, and then wiping them against his hoodie, his cleaning rather meticulous considering how dirty and disheveled his appearance might other wise be.

He stopped for a moment as she admired his mutation, something which Sylar rarely did himself. He lifted the clean claw and showed it off. "I'm not sure how good it is to have knives for fingers. A lot of mistakes when they first grew in." He remembered cutting himself quite frequently as well as the environment around him, the sewer now full of claw marks from Sylar's life here. "And the strength is fine and all, except all it's really good at is breaking stuff. At least you can hide among them." Sylar didn't really want to rejoin society considering how it'd treated him since he was young, but the option would at least be nice.

Sylar missed reading more often lately, perhaps it was the boredom from his job being on hold as of late. "I liked mysteries myself, whatever took up my thoughts." So she had a normal life, then died and came back? That's certainly a weird experience "Mine happened a few years back, slow at first, but it grows all the time."

Sylar didn't really know if he could consider most of the people he knew friends, but he at least had a few. "A couple of mutants are friends, but I'm dangerous so I tend to avoid people. They're good people though, and Roach is like me, only even more mutated. He's teaching me how to control it, in return for my work. I...dislike humans." Was all he mustered in response to her talking about a non-mutant. His tail swished a bit back and forth, showing his irritation at the thought of normals.

Could this guy just take a compliment? Debby Downers got on her nerves. But Emily understood where the man’s self-loathing came from, so she didn’t judge.
She heard the distaste of humans drip off Sylar’s tongue by the way he spoke about them. Emily frowned. Sylar must have had some bad experience with humans to hate them so much. She placed a hand on his back for comfort.

You know those little kittens that have been in the rain? They have been in too many fights and are probably missing patches of fur and a part of their ear. This kitten is tough, yet still oddly adorable. This is how Emily was beginning to see Sylar. She sat down next to the crouching mutant.

She sat there without saying a word for a while, her hand still resting on his back. “At the turn of the century I watched a group of my dear friends lynched because they were different. Their whole lives they were prosecuted. And when they decided to fight back, they lost. And they paid with their lives. I had to cut them down myself.” Emily sighed. “The people who did it were never prosecuted for their crimes. There was nothing I could do.” Bringing up the memory hurt. The hatred that the men felt for her friends. And for what? Being different. Remembering the look on their family’s faces, the loss and hopelessness.

“I hated those men for a long time, even after they died. I hated myself for letting it happen. And what did that hate get me? Nothing. I’ve done so much more for myself and others after I let the hate go and went on with my unlife. What I’m trying to say is that you shouldn’t let the pain of the past transform you into something you don’t want to be.”

Crouched down, Sylar really might have more of a feline appearance, his swaying tail and random bouts of claw maintenance were certainly more animal than man like. Though he did in fact not get hair balls. His tail stopped for a moment as Emily began to speak at length, his attention held as the girl told him of something that had happened to her.

A group of people lynched for their differences? What differences, were they mutants? Did mutants even exist a century ago? Or maybe it was a racial thing, he remembered learning a bit about the history of the United States and how people of different skin color were also persecuted, humans literally abused one another at the slightest difference, it was no wonder the idea of super powers or deformity set them off so. He expected such a thing would leave a permanent scar on any normal person, but this girl would probably live forever, or close to it.

Age gave maturity, but Sylar realized the maturity or maybe insanity that would come from immortality would be seriously boggling. He'd thought as much when he met that crazy phoenix man. And Roach wasn't exactly all their either, and who knew how long a cockroach man could live. He shrugged a bit, getting her message even if the words tasted bitter to his young mind.

"Not everyone will live as long as you Emily. You've got all the time in the world to heal your wounds." He wasn't so ignorant as to ignore the valid point she'd made though. "Everyone else is young and stupid, us and them. I've been picked on since before I was a mutie, it was the same then. Is it so easy for us to turn on one another?" He thought aloud, knowing that whether it had been his blindness, his fearful nature, or his monstrous power, all of it had simply lead to the same thing. People misunderstood him, that led to anger and fear, which he responded to with the same.

"I could tear a building down if I wanted to ya know? And yet I still hate normal people for being afraid of me. Mostly cause I was afraid of them." It was odd how speaking with people so much older than him tempted to prompt these moments of insight. Bennu and Roach made Sylar realize there was some good to his mutation, to his power that he could embrace to make his life better. And this girl made him realize that most of the things he hated about normal people, were things that normal people felt about each other. He sighed. "I miss when life was simple, whatever happened to just stealing from convenience stores." He said with bit of humor to his voice.