Participants:
| Scene Title | What Fire Requires |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | A youth in search of a cause finds one. Or so it would seem. |
| Date | October 28, 2009 |
Outside the Nite Owl
Ash pushes open the door to the Nite Owl and slips out of the diner with a full stomach and a slightly less empty pocket. His footsteps are light and quiet as he moves, and despite his fullness he's very very alert. He tucks his hands into the heavy wool coat he wears when it's cooler out, the man's head turning minimally as he scans the area around him with quick flickers of his gaze from place to place. He hunches his shoulders just a touch as he walks, moving towards the parking lot and away from the cafe.
He's waited until it's at an hour that, while it isn't encroaching upon curfew, allows for long shadows and darker corners. When Ash goes moving out of the Nite Owl, he does too. Nothing special to look at, really - a teenager, with lank, scissor-cut hair, a pale complexion and clothes that don't fit him - likely one of the many homeless youths that plague New York City. Gripping his coat around himself, the boy glances over his shoulder, pitches a smoldering cigarette to the ground, and pushes off his lean against the wall to pursue.
Rather than waiting too long, he only follows the man for as long as it takes for them to get away from the building, before, without much fanfare, he calls out at a rasping hiss, "Hey. Hey guy. Wait up."
Ash doesn't miss the seemingly normal teenager, but also doesn't dismiss him. He glances his way, eyes moving to legs, hips, sides, looking for bulges, then to arms and legs to watch for awkward movement that would signify extra weight, all this before he turns and begins to move away from the cafe. He's gotten just down the street from the cafe when he hears that voice behind him. He turns around, an eyebrow lifting upwards slowly at the boy asking him to wait up. "Yeah?" He asks simply, the large man's hands still tucked into the pockets of his coat, his eyes regarding the teenager curiously. "Got no money to spare kid if that's what your'e looking for, if not then out with it." He tilts his head up a bit, glancing back down the street towards the diner before his eyes fall back on the teen.
The teenager's brow crinkles in consternation, as if debating arguing this point. If it were truly what he were after, then perhaps he would, with the lights of the diner shining a backdrop behind him in telling evidence. He squitms, but ultimately, he briskly shakes his head. "No. No, I don't want money. Look— "
He takes a few steps closer, though stays out of range all the same, as wary as the coyote that approaches the campfire, all ducked head and keen eyes. "I'm from Staten Island. That's where I go, you know. People like me. Like you."
If Ash were inclined to look at the kid, rather than simply his disheleved state, that he would want money, there could be something familiar about his face. Something that harks back to a place in Utah, with wire walls and colour-coded levels. Perhaps not. There was a crush of mass, at Moab, and faces blur into nothing. The kid's hair had been shorter, too. "They were talking about— justice. Doing things. A lot of people are talking that way. I heard you were too."
Ash lets his hands slip out of the pockets of his coat, his eyes concentrating more fully upon this teenager that's flagged him down in the middle of New York. He is standing light on his feet, rocking subtly from the balls of his feet to the heels and back, a ready and alert stance, a man waiting for trouble. He watches the way the man approaches him, and for a moment there's a flicker of familiarity in his eyes, but it's either dismissed or it's buried. Could just as easily have been the face of a guard as of one of the other prisoners. "I haven't been to Staten in quite awhile kid." His voice dry and very neutral, no emotion at all shown in it. "Yeah, alot of people are doing a hell of a lot of talking, but very few are fucking doing something." he purses his lips for a moment in thought. "Yeah, that word might be going around." He admits, his head tilting forwards slowly in acknowledgement of the kid's statement. "Who are you?"
"No shit. I followed you all the way out here, didn't I?" The teenage brings up a hand to scrub at his face wearily, before remembering himself, shoving his hands into the pockets of his coat and hiking up his shoulders. "There's a lot of other talk on Staten too, like you said, but it's not my scene. I don't want to hide there anymore. As for who am I— "
His teeth click shut in thought, before he angles his chin in a cocky kind of head toss. "It's not who I was. Names're everything, you know? But I go by Sylar now." His mouth twists into a smirk. "The guy who sent this city to hell, changed everything - I'm lookin' to change it too. For retribution." A beat, then, "What do I call you?"
Ash folds his arms over his chest slowly, his face set in impassive stone as he waits for the guy to get on with it and get out with it. He pulls in a slow breath as he waits, listening though, not dismissing what's said. "Staten isn't my scene either. It's full of people hiding…" He chuckles a little bit, but it's a chuckle witih no feeling behind it, as he says what Ash was just about to say. He watches the kid toss his head about like that, but makes no comment. The mention of the name Sylar brings no emotion to his face, not anger, not loathing, not respect, not a single thing. "If you are Sylar, then you're a one man army. Why would you want help? Or to help another? I'm not turning you away or anything… I'm just wondering why." He ponders the thought about what he could be called. "Ash works as fine as it always has. Retribution is what I plan to be known as in the near future."
"Ash." It's repeated neutrally, judgment reserved, as if testing it out and apparently finding it to be satisfactory. "Well, Ash, maybe I should be a one-man army. I had friends, you know, people like me. They were killed, and I couldn't do anything." 'Sylar's tone is flat, as if whatever emotions he would have had have been exhausted to the point of nothingness. "So maybe a group is a waste of time, but I can't do it on my own either. I'm not gonna be led blind, though. What're you gonna do? To be known as retribution? What's that gonna take?"
Ash glances around the area a bit before he turns and slips down the street a few more yards, and then down into an alleyway, not waiting to see if he's followed by this man that claims to be Sylar, just heading into the alley before he stops and waits there, to see if the man follows him to the alley, to a bit more private of a spot, and one where they might not be noticed by passing pedestrians and New Yorkers. He leans back against the wall of the alley, pulling in a slow breath, his eyes on the alley floor in front of him as he listens for the sound of following feet.
It doesn't take too long. Hard to say if the real Sylar would follow, but the teenager with his name seems keen enough. Soon, there's the scuff of foot steps, darting and quick, and his willowy form, wrapped as it is in wool and cotton, appears at the mouth of the alleyway. A hand lifts to shove hair out of his eyes, before he peers in curiously after Ash, and remains silent, attentive, as the sound of Chelsea traffic drones softly in the background.
Ash looks up when he hears the foosteps stop, his head nodding slowly to the kid. He tucks his own hands back into the pockets of his coat, his eyes watching him, studyign him. "Groups do let you down. Whether it's through dying, or not doing what needs to be done, or just being too limited in the scope of thier retribution… they tend to let down. As to what I am going to do? I'm going to do what I can. RIght now, I don't have the contacts that I need to do the major shit. But once I have them? It's going to get bloody, and it's going to get messy. I'm not in this for the short gig. I'm in it for the long fucking haul. Unlike many, I won't hesitate to kill the bastards opressing us. Alot of us haven't done shit wrong, some of us have. But that's no different from a normal fucking human. An evolved is gunned down while in line to register themselves, why? Because they were deemed dangerous. They hadn't done a single thing, but none the less, they were gunned down. That's the kind of bullshit I look to stop." He shrugs his shoulders slowly. "I guess you could compare me to Pariah. I don't have the group they had, or the resources. But the mission is the same. People are going to die, some won't deserve to, but if it's necessary than it's going to happen. they want someone to be afraid of. I'm going to give them that something. First I'm going after Humanis First and their hate mongering bullshit."
He listens, the most attentive student Ash will come across today. There's a flap of wings— a pigeon, maybe, considering this end of town— of a bird coming to settle in edges of the rooftop that overhang the alleyway, but it doesn't get a glance as Sylar comes to stand within the darkness of the alcove. "Humanis," he repeats, lip curling. "As far as I'm concerned, anyone who's not like us are all the same. Humanis First just painted a target, don't you think? What comes after them?"
Ash glances up towards the bird, the man's eyes narrowing a little bit. He reaches down, picking up a piece of a brick from the alley floor. He hefts it, tossing it up once, twice, testing it's weight. then his arm jerks and the brick piece goes spinning through the air to strike the bird and send it spiraling to the ground. You never know what kind of powers people have, talking to animals, maybe shape shifting, who knows. He turns his eyes back on Sylar and he lets his focus settle on him. "No, there I disagree. Most people are scared of us, but they don't hate us. Humanis First are hate mongers. They're no better than the fuckign Nazi party was before they came into power in Germany. Humanis First has painted themselves a target, and I have a plan to deal with thier supporters."
The man shifts a bit against the brick, jacket scraping on the wall before he continues. "Depends at that point. If I have the resources, I'm going to go rip Moab down to it's foundations. If I don't, then I'm going to go for fucking HomeSec here in the city, hunt down every one of the fuckers that I can find, until I have no more to hunt, or they get too smart to be found. But Humanis First is going to be first. With what I want to do, no one will publically support those bastards for quite a long time."
Sylar jumps a little as the piece of rock is hurled upwards, the sound of it clattering among the gutter louder than the sound of it impacting the bird. His eyes are wide, but he manages to tame his expression into something neutral. "Good throw," is observed, pacing a little the width of the alley, all the while watching Ash. "Moab?" is repeated, a blink of big eyes as something is factored in, and a switch is flicked. "I— I was there, man. They had me there. I hurt someone, with my power, and I turned myself in and next thing I know, I wake up in Utah. If you're going after them, I want a piece. I won't cramp your style, trust me, I can hurt people."
Ash arches a brow slowly at the jumping from the guy, that's not something he'd expect from the man that supposedly blew up Manhattan. Not that he has any special reason to disbelieve the stories, just that he's a suspicious person by nature these days. "Never know who, or how people might be listening in these days." Is his simple statement. The question of Moab gets a slow nod, a flash of deep, molten angery crossing his face. "yes, fucking Moab. Going to rip that place down brick by fucking brick." There's a growl to his voice as he says it. He nods his head forwards, slowly. "I know. I recognized your face, though I wasn't sure if you were prisoner or guard. I was in prison when they took me. I was a street fighter before all of this shit. I was in a fight one night and my power fucking hit me like a train. I killed the man, on accident, that i was fighting. They threw me in prison for manslaughter. I was in there when fucking HomeSec came for me. They tranqed me, and I woke up in Moab. I started in green level, but two guard's and an escape attempt later I was in red level. I was sleeping, then woke up in fucking Virginia."
He pulls in a slow breath, holds it for a long few moments before he lets it out. "If you want a piece of them, then you can have as much as you want when I go after them. I'm looking for people that are willing to do what I am to make this shit stop. And that, is anything. I'm not in this to hurt people, fuck I'm not even in it to kill people. But I want Johnathon Smith that's never done a fucking thing wrong in his life and is now being fucked with because he's Evolved to be able to go back to his normal life. There is no normal for me, but there can be for our kind. People are going to get hurt, and people are going to die, and I don't have a single problem with that if it's what it takes." He watches this man, this Sylar, watching his face to see just how he reacts to all of this. "But first, I need to gather steam, and steam requires fire. The fuel for my fire is going to be Humanis First."
His expression is one of listening, brown eyes calculating and sharper than the softer look of intrigue that defines his angular features. He sweeps haphazardly cut hair out of his eyes. Draws in a breath, once, doggish through his nose and wet sounding, and puts his hands in his pockets. "Then maybe I can help you," Sylar states, white teeth drawing against his bottom lip, eyes tracking down to the ground the back up at Ash. "There's a youth shelter, in the Rookery. As good as a shelter can be, down that way."
A wandering step back is taken, though he doesn't turn his back to Ash. "Ask for me there. They know my alias. If you want to find me, anyway. I can show you what I can do."
Ash nods his head a little bit at the mention of the youth shelter. "I know of it." His eyes had watched Sylar though, watched him closely, studied him, the way he reacted, how he looked when he was thinking, all of it. At the end of it all he cocks his head to the side a touch. "I've heard a little bit about what your'e capable of, but not everything, and obviously I've never really met you." He folds his arms over his chest slowly and watches this idnividual. "They know you as Sylar? Or as this other name you alluded to before?" The man may be a brute, but he is not stupid, knowing enough to at least ask questions and clarify things he's not sure of. "I'm going to be organizing a Humanis First event. I'm going to organize it in the streets near the registration building. That will be the second action I take against the bastards. the first has already been taken. I'll ask about you in the near future, let you know a little more about the plans I'm laying."
"There mighta been some talk around Moab," the boy concedes, a self-conscious curl to his shoulders. "About what I can do. But trust me, it's way cooler to watch in person. Just ask for Sylar - I'm not the first to go by that name in those parts and I won't be the last, but they'll know who you mean. If I'm not in, just leave a message. I'll check in." He starts moving back some more, shadows passing over his form. "And— thanks. They tried to make me a criminal - I'd rather be a fighter."
And with that, he's turning on his heel, and heading at a brisk jog for the corner, to disappear around it and sink back into the shadows of Manhattan, allowing Ash time alone with himself and his dead bird.
Ash looks down at the bird after Sylar has departed the alley. He sighs a little bit. "At least you didn't make the active decision to condemn us. You were just an unfortunate bystander." He leans down over the bird with a soft and somewhat sad look on his features. "You won't be the last casualty of circumstance either." he frowns and straightens up from where he's crouching. His foot comes down hard on top of the bird's head to end any lingering suffering if the bird is still alive, if not then it's a bit of blood on his shoe. Ash, the man planning the slaughter of dozens of people, the destruction of a federal prison, and associating with the man that is said to have destroyed Manhattan, slips off into the night of new York.