Funny thing about her Digital Arts teacher was that the woman demanded 100% in everything. You couldn't snatch a few descriptive words from an article, steal an idea from your desk partner, and never ever could you use pictures from the internet for your projects. Doing so, if she found out, was an automatic F on the project. 

Hence why Shelby was shuffling around at a god awful hour of the night, snapping pictures of vines, park benches, windows with lights on, and people shuffling past with umbrellas. Oh, it was also raining. She has an umbrella with her, tucked into the crook of one arm as she attempted to use her artistic eye to take a picture of a dented tin can on the wet, moonlit sidewalk. 

Heaving a sigh, she hauled her hood back up for the fifth time, and tucked her camera back under the safety of her umbrella. She had 52 pictures logged away so far, but she didn't think it was nearly enough. Her teacher was a harsh mistress who demanded a lot, and damnit, Shelby wanted that blasted A!

She would give herself another hour before turning in, though. There were three days left before the project was due, and she still have to find inventive ways to alter the pictures, frame them, and have them on her on her teachers desk.

Sylar's life had been entirely too stressful lately, too little support when he needed it and far too much chaos. Things just seemed to go from bad to worse now whenever he made contact with anyone, like his touch had suddenly become toxic somehow. So with his mind clouded, he easily made the mistake of being conspicuous on his raid into the city. He'd broken into a grocery store, and absolutely destroyed a few aisles worth of food, filling his gut with a mixture of chilled meats and junk food before bailing into the city.

Bursting out out onto the streets from his crime scene, the rain pelted him heavily, dousing his already mangy attire and leaving him very uncomfortable. "Yeah, of course it's still raining" He mumbled to himself as he stood on the sidewalk, gazing down the street towards the alley he'd come from earlier. His attention was splintered and distracted, preventing him from realizing a certain girl would be able to see a monstrous silhouette in the rain drizzled darkness, his tail thrashing about and sparkling in the street lights.

It was too far to just head home from here, so he'd have to spend the rest of the day at a lair, which meant it was time to head back down into his world. Sylar sprinting off, dropping to all fours as he ran down the empty sidewalk and turned the corner into an alley, knocking over a garbage can as he did, leaving a bit of a trail as he made it to the manhole, his claws digging into the steel and stone to pry it from the street. With a heavy thud he tossed it aside, and dropped down into the stagnant darkness, fleeing into the network of tunnels that he'd grown up in the past couple years.

Which left an aspiring photographer to question just what she'd seen, a monstrous creature fleeing off into the night, or an easy e that just happened to fall right into her lap?

She has been gazing up, trying to snap a picture of raindrops in the street light, and failing horribly. All she managed to get was a soaked lens, and a face full of water.

With her chin tucked into her chest, as she dried the lens off with her sleeve, a glimmering in the light caught her attention. Off down the sidewalk she spotted something... swaying? Gracefully, almost. Like a gentle metronome arm, her eyes followed it as they tried and failed to make out what it was. All too suddenly it moved off, a clang and a crash echoed out of an alley somewhere, and Shelby found herself sprinting after it. Whatever it was.

Rounding a corner, she edged past an overturned trashcan and managed to catch sight of the object sinking quickly into a hole in the ground up ahead of her. The hole, as it were, turned out to be a manhole. The cover had been tossed away haphazardly, which... really gave her a reason to pause. Whatever had gone down there was strong enough to toss the solid metal disk like a pop can. Did she really want follow it in? Nope. Not even slightly.

But, as she swirled on her heels with the intent of booking it the hell out of there, her roommates words came floating back to her. Something about a boogeyman lurking around in the middle of the night. Some said it lived the the sewers like a crocodile...er... alligator. whatever. Pft.

Shelby turned and cast a skeptical eye at the hole in the ground. She didn't believe in monsters. Mystical creatures didn't exist, after all.

..But... if it wasn't the legend her roommate had spoken of, what had it been? Human? Mutant? Either, if there was any truth to the story, were both equally as horrifying as the myth. Monsters and ghosts were one thing, but to Shelby, cold, calculating people who did the things she had been warned of, were more horrifying. Let her be eaten by Dracula anyday, just keep the serial killers and psychopaths away.

Frowning, she shifted on her feet and fidgeted with her camera. Maybe if she were very, very careful, she could sneak in after whoever it was and snag a picture. If only to prove to everyone that there wasn't a monster skulking around New York. Or, silver lining here, that she'd get a really really good picture and shock her teacher into an A+.

Fear bundled expertly into the back of her throat, she peered into the darkness of the manhole for a few moments silently, waiting to see if someone was going to try reach out for her like a horror movie, before slinging her camera around her neck and closing her umbrella. Then, she edged herself in slowly, happy to find a ladder was present.

The sewers of New York had been home to a monstrous creature for years now, though in recent months he'd spent avlot of time top side as well, but the various discarded food items, and claw marks throughout the tunnels were evidence of Sylar's presence, though in the musky darkness of the tunnels it was unlikely Shelby would notice much of these signs. Sylar had dropped into the tunnels, and bolted off toward one of his lairs, a junction where he kept spare clothes and stored food like some sort of animal in preparation for winter.

The boy stood and stripped the wet clothes from his form, his armor chilled from the damp cloth as he swapped into another outfit, a loose fitting shirt, sleeves torn from his claws and a fresh pair of jeans. The tunnels were silent save for the sounds of his movement, and a distant echo of a thump. Had something fallen down into the tunnels? He wondered if he was just being overly cautious, but he'd check out the area to make sure nothing unexpected was coming up.

Sylar could move at speeds putting Olympic athletes to shame, so he could traverse these tunnels in the blink of an eye, but he wouldn't know where the intruder was till she started making noise to alert him. So for now it became a sort of survival horror game, a girl looking for answers or a killer photograph, and the possibly flesh eating monster boy who was now crawling around the tunnels, his super human senses just looking for a trace of the girl's scent, heat, or one misplaced step.

The sole of her sneakers met the ground and something squelched. The sound was bad enough to sent her reeling back up onto the ladder with a barely contained whimper. Oh,god, she was in a freakin' sewer! What was she doing in a SEWER?!

Pausing for a moment to suck in a brea- ohlord. The air was rancid. Her elbow hooked around the ladder, she covered her mouth with her hand and tried to breathe through her sleeve. Almond butter wafted into her nose, with just a hint of putrid swamp, and she sighed in relief. Porta Potties were the closest she had every been to a sewer, and now she was standing inside of one. She dearly hoped the floor wouldn't flood when people flushed, like they did in the movies.

Testing the floor again, she left herself down slowly and gripped her camera in her hands. Flipping the power on and removing the lens cover, she shifted to a low light settle and started off in the near pitch darkness. A few feet in and she could hardly see, which resulted in her switching the flash bulb of her camera on. immediately she wished she hadn't. The floor, walls, and whatever was running quietly past in the drainage ditch was better left unseen.

"Oh, gross." Shuffling on, avoiding touching anything but the walkway, she swung her light back and forth to search for signs of where the mystery shape had gone.

Sylar had covered the area right outside his junction lair, but didn't find anything of note save for some of the rats. He wasn't a fan of the little rodents, but they tended to avoid the big sewer predator and his lairs for fear of being eaten themselves, so he expanded out. The rain in the world above was distorting his sense of hearing by creating tons of noises to pick apart, making it difficult to pinpoint where anything unusual might be, giving Shelby time to tred deeper into the darkness she should have been avoiding.

Sylar dashed down a tunnel, crossing an intersection some way ahead of Shelby, his blur of movement just enough to catch your eye in this darkness. Being blind meant that the light of a camera wouldn't give Shelby away, but her body warmth, far higher than the area around her would, but for now Sylar hadn't noticed her down the tunnel, the sewer predator still checking out various parts of his tunnel network and leaving his lair unguarded for the moment.

However his ears caught sometime at the last moment, a tunnel away from where she was when he heard words. Words meant a person, and people meant trouble. The boy growled, his alien hiss echoing into the tunnels as he turned and prepared to take a peek at who had dared to ignore the various stories that kept people out of his tunnels. "They never learn." He said as he doubled back towards the source of the sound.

Movement out of the corner of her eye caught her attention, though just barely. Her camera swung in that direction seconds too late, from where she had been inspecting a water drain in the wall at her side.

Nothing. There was nothing in front of her but trickling water, cement, and shadows. Her hackles rose and she gulped. She'd never been much of a fan of darkness. Her imagination was too powerful at times, conjuring all sorts of nightmarish creatures.

"Keep it together, Shelbs. Get in, snap a few pictures of rats and poo water, get out. Rub it in Jennifers smug face. A lot."

Continuing on, she found a passage opening off to her left and turned toward it, aiming her light down into the darkness. It flickered, and she swore quietly. Checking the battery gauge, she found it dangerously low. Considering how long she'd been out snapping pictures that night, it didn't surprise her. She hadn't changed batteries once. Using the flash as a light source burned through what was left of the charge too quickly. She reached for her purse to dig out her spare batteries, when the light flickered off permanently, and she swore again a little louder.

Fumbling around in the dark blindly, she found her phone first and woke it. The screen light nearly blinded her, but she quickly got to work digging around in her purse.

Sylar had come back around, entering the same tunnel that Shelby was in, though the distance between them kept him safely within the shadows. Sylar was in his usual crouch, his body compacted in a way that would make most people uncomfortable, but it was an excellent way to stay out of view as he observed the current invader to his world. A human form, smaller and more curved than a man. Yet another woman had found her way into Sylar's murky home. What was it with the New York sewers and women, seriously?

His eyes couldn't see her lights, and the camera didn't generate enough heat to alert Sylar to it's presence, so for now the sewer creature just observed the girl, his form at the edge of her light, like a predator watching it's prey through tall grass. The boy decided the easily solution would be the funnest, scare her out of here and make sure she wouldn't ever come back. Sylar turned and began to crawl up the wall of the tunnel, his claws sinking into the wet stone like a fork into meat, the blades easily rending the old stone.

Firmly attached to the ceiling, Sylar began to crawl down the tunnel towards Shelby, his tail slithering along the roof of the tunnel behind him. The only sounds he made were the soft tones of his breathing, and that little snickt noise his claws made as they pulled from the stone and slid back in a few inches forward, the boy scaling the tunnels like a spider as he positioned himself closer and closer to Shelby, not wanting to pounce until just the right moment. As he came within a few feet of her, nearing a spot he could drop down right on her, or even end up behind her, he made the first real noise that would reveal trouble was coming.

The completely inhuman hiss Sylar could make escaped his throat, slithering through his fangs and echoing lighting into the tunnel around Shelby.

The batteries had sunk to the very bottom of her purse, underneath her wallet and capstick. The next step was getting her the battery trap on her camera open, and the old ones out. This required her to precariously wedge her phone between her chin and collar bone, so her hands were free. She ignored the soft sounds that started up behind her, figuring it was just coming from a rat or something, and fixed her lightsource.

Snapping the trap shut, she tucked the drained batteries into her back pocket turned her camera light back on. The tunnel lit up around her, way better than her cell phone screen had been.

And then, something hissed. Immediately the girl froze. She didn't budge an inch, didn't squeal or shout. She turned into a pink, fleshy statue and kept her light pointed in front of her. Her first thought was that it was a snake... but she had never heard of sewer snakes... unless it was someones escaped boa pet. In which case, she really didn't want to tangle with it. She had a thing about strangulation and broken bones.

The second thing she thought about was a rather large rat, they could get pretty big after all... and the potential of getting bitten. She really didn't want to have to get a rabies shot. She'd rather go mad and die slowly than get stabbed in the shoulder by one of those horrible hollow needled. Well, maybe not die, but still. After a moment of standing shock still like moving would be the end of her, she started to turn very, very slowly. The light in her hands edged over the walls, swung across the waterway, until it was angled in a halfass fashion behind her. When no monster rat or anacondas immediately jumped out, she turned fully and shined her light at all of the nooks and crannies, looking for something anything that could have made the sound. Was she hearing things? That tended to happen underground and in tunnels. Sounds echoing from far away carried in just the right way to make them sound as if they were right on top of you. The root cause of a tons of ghost stories, no doubt.

Heart hammering in her chest, she sucked a deep breath in and let it out slowly. She'd scared herself half to death, letting herself get all paranoid like that. Her light swung up the wall slightly, while she scoffed at herself, before angling toward the ceili-

"...ha" A sound like a mix between a laugh and a whimper left her as her spotlight landed on half of a creature. No, not a creature. A horrible mix between human and monster. Her hands trembled, the light swayed off of him for a moment before locking on fully. She froze again, and didn't dare to even breath. The face was human, mostly. There was hair. There were clothes.There was a tail she could just barely make out in her peripherals; she couldn't move her eyes away from his face lest the action cause him to attack.

HE WAS ON THE CEILING WHO DOES THAT.

Her finger twitched over the shutter button as if it had a mind of it's own, and the telltale click-snap of a picture being taken echoed in the tunnel.

Sylar watched as the girl reacted, her sudden movements, the anxious action and the rise in body temperature that accompanied fear. And the scent of sweat beginning to form, the very pheromone of fear. And it all culminated as the recipe came to a close when the girl finally spotted him, a weak sound getting caught in her throat as she laid eyes upon the Scourge of New York's underbelly. His tail dropped from the ceiling a bit, curling beneath the boy like a viper staring down a mouse. But the worst was the boys hair, which usually hid his unnatural face was falling free, revealing the boy's sullen looks, infected eyes, and the strange flesh that was wrapping around the sides of his cheeks.

Before Sylar could react though, the girl snapped a photo of Sylar, though the boy couldn't tell from the bright flash in his face when had zero effect. No what set him off was that little shutter click, a sound Sylar knew meant trouble. Some humans, mostly tabloid people loved trying to snap photos of him, and if a good photo got out they'd all come down here in droves. As the shutter finished his motion, returning to it's beginning the boy pulled his lips back from his various fangs and growled, a chilling sound that would send a spine down any human's spine.

The boy dropped from the ceiling with a thud, that small curled up ball of mutant fury unfolding as he stood up to stare at Shelby. He growled once more, but finally words found their way into his animal act. "The camera...Give it to me human." He hissed though he didn't intend to politely wait for her to respond, Sylar was going to take the camera, one way or another...

It growled at her, and she flinched. Really, she should have been running, but her knees were locked with fear, and she hadn't had a decent lungful of air since she had spotted it. She doubted she'd make it more than a few steps before she tripped over herself and it... she?... whatever it pounced on her.

Her right foot inched back a fraction of an inch the moment he dropped from the ceiling, before locking in place again when he unfurled before her. It was a he, if she could hazard a guess from the clothes. The hair had thrown her off, as well as the skin tone and eyes. Pitch black eyes. She didn't give them any more thought than that, before his demand hit her and she all but tossed the camera at his feet.

"Y-yeah, sure. All yours."

It bounced, flickered once, but thankfully stayed on. Unfortunately it wasn't aimed directly at him anymore, but across the waterway that ran past them, which cast horrible shadows all around them and limited what she cud see. Was that a tail? Why'd it have to look so horrifyingly pointy?

"I'll...uh... just be going then. I can go now, right?"
Her suddenly free hands hung at her sides, but the right was twitching back towards her purse. She knew she had a handheld can of bear spray in there, as it tended to make her feel a little safer maneuvering the streets of such a big city. At the moment, she wanted a few of them. Or a stun gun. Or a gun. Maybe an army.

Come on, work legs, work!

Like a deer caught face to face with a tiger, Sylar's presence terrified the girl before him, as it should. Prey knew when it was face to face with it's predator, and Sylar was the apex predator of New York. The girl was surprisingly obedient, neither fainting nor running as Sylar demanded her camera. She tossed it to the ground, the device hitting the ground with a thud and a splash of sewage. The boy hissed again, though this wasn't as ferocious or intimating as the one before, more a sign of approval. His tail flicked back and forth a few times, like a cat's as he thought of what to do next.

As time seemed to drag on, Sylar thinking of how to dispose of Shelby, and the girl trying to find some means of self defense, neither of them aware of that toxin in the air that would infect the girl in time. You see Sylar's claws leaked a transparent venom, a unique type of neurotoxin that could hang in the dank sunless air only here in the sewers. And the fear Shelby felt now could barely compare to what the toxin would catalyze it too.

Sylar turned and in a flash his tail shot forward with the intent to coil around Shelby like a python around a rat. The appendage was nearly six foot long, and just as powerful as any boa constrictor, but worst was that pointed blade at the end, a deadly sharp weapon laced with neurotoxin, but Sylar didn't want to cut the girl or stab her, just to stop any ideas she might have in her head. He'd ran afoul with some oddly brave women as of late.

"No...you cannot." He whispered in response to her question, when he realized if this girl had a camera, she might have others or have friends down here, since only tabloid cronies came down here to bug him anymore. He hadn't heard or seen anyone else though, so he was sure she was alone. "You came down here...alone." He glared at her, his black soulless eyes piercing through the girl in the dim dark light. "Empty your pockets, leave everything here." He threatened.

Her hand stopped a centimeter away from her purse flap. He was staring at her. Hadn't said a goddamn word. Her breath hitched in her throat and she fought hard to control her breathing. It wouldn't do any good to hyperventilate now and end up a nameless blob floating through the underground passages.

Her eyes barely flickered back towards the tunnel that would lead her out, when he moved and she was suddenly constricted by his tail. She still couldn't get over that he had a tail. With a gasp, she stiffened and her knees threatened to give out from under her. Oh god. She was going to die, wasn't she? She was going to die in a pisshole in an unfamiliar city, and when someone eventually found her corpse rats will have eaten her into an unidentifiable mess. Her bottom lip trembled, but she tried to keep it together even though she was starting to panic.

Keep it together... keep it together... You can still walk away from this.

Digging into her pockets she dug out a pen, some gum, her phone, one used roll of film and one yet-to-be opened roll. Each item clattered to the ground, and she wriggled slightly. "I can't get my purse o-off with you holding me..."

Not a lie. Her bag was a shoulder strap, so it was hooked around her. She couldn't get it off without her arms being free.

...unless you counted the buckle conveniently located next to her left hand, but what she didn't mention probably wouldn't kill her... hopefully. Truthfully, she didn't really care for any of the items on her person. Not more than her life, anyway. But, she really wanted that can of bear spray. Her mom has always told her to fight in situations like this, because once you let yourself get disarmed you'd lost the fight. OF course, that had been about metaphorical human attackers... not... not this dude.

She really hoped her ploy worked for an entirely different reason, too. Because it was getting really hard to breath without her ribs expanding into his dangerous looking tail.

Sylar was learning something as time went on, he really didn't like defiance or resistance. Whenever people didn't do as he expected, things only got tremendously worse for Sylar. He growled at the girl and spun his body, his coiled tail dragging Shelby with it as he flung her down into the tunnel and the muck past her camera. It wasn't that he knew about her can of pepper spray, in fact this might be a chance for her to retrieve the item. No, Sylar just didn't like the idea of the human girl talking back.

The boy growled and stared at the girl now free of his serpentine tail, but further away from the ladder where she'd come down. "I wouldn't talk back to me human. I don't like your kind." He hissed at her as he stepped forward, his thin frail form somehow so dominating down here in the dark, the curves and shapes of his armor, the light reflecting off his claws and the tail of course, was the one part that always drew attention. These sewers were the factual nightmares of children, and Sylar was the real life Boogeyman that lived here in the dark.

His claws clicked lightly against the stone, leaving scratch marks against it with the faintest of steps, the boy's form advancing on the girl, his body now standing directly above the only light source down here in the tunnels. He took a breath, the air scraping against his fangs as it was drawn in and let out when he spoke. "I told you to drop it all. And I'd suggest you do, because otherwise you won't be able to out run me." He smiled, his lips pulling back from metallic fangs and leaving the last sight the girl would get before his clawed foot slammed down into her camera and shattered the device and ruining most of the film.

Her back hit the floor and forced the air from her lungs with a whoosh, and though some small part of her was ranting about having sewage on her hands and clothes, she dared not move. Unbeknownst to her the very air she was breathing was laced, and it wasn't making her panic any better.

All of the warnings that had ever been instilled in her were gradually fading into the back of her thoughts as she fought for breath and blinked a sudden bout of tears away. Cautiously but quickly, her bag was un-shouldered and shoved away from her. She didn't even go for the can of bear spray when it rolled out, along with her lipbalm. The crunching of her camera (her borrowed, school owned camera) she started.

"I'm sorry!" Slapping a hand over her mouth, she stopped the cascade of desperate apologies before they could begin, and forced herself to be quiet. She didn't know what he considered 'talking back' but didn't want to test the waters. She couldn't see him very well anymore. Just the light reflecting off of his many sharp pointy bits, and the looming shadow he had become.