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Feb. 13th, 2014 06:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brainsurgeonOOC Information:
Name: Reg
Are you over 15? Yes
Contact: Regasssa on AIM, DW, Plurk and at hotmail dot com.
IC Information:
Name: Preincarnation: Gabriel Gray, Reincarnation: Dante De Angelis
Canon and medium: Heroes; Live Action
Age: Preincarnation: 30, Reincarnation: 27
Preincarnation Species: Human (Evolved)
Preincarnation Appearance: Here
Any differences: Here Dante wears glasses, and greases his hair back only when he's at work. The style gets lifted back out when he leaves work, but the glasses normally stay on. Outside of work he can be seen wearing colorful and casual clothes, and has a great passion for unusual or dated hats.
Preincarnated History:
"When I was a kid, I used to wish some stranger would come and tell me my family wasn't really my family. They weren't bad people, they were just... insignificant. And I wanted to be different. Special. I wanted to change. A new name; a new life. The watchmaker's son... tick... became a watchmaker. It is so futile. And I wanted to be... important."
Gabriel was adopted by his biological uncle Martin and aunt Virginia Gray, from his parents; Samson Gray and an unnamed mother. Gabriel saw his parents as insignificant, and like many people his age saw his life as mundane and imagined that it was going nowhere; that he'd be trapped forever in the same routine. Unfortunately despite also being special, and having the same power as Gabriel, his biological father Samson is also insignificant. His meeting with his son when it happens is anticlimatic--he is dying of cancer, alone and paranoid. A complete let down, and someone whom Sylar - despite having the ability to heal and essentially live forever - leaves to die from his cancer. (I should point out that at this canon point Sylar hasn't met his father, but I bring it up because Samson has a psychological effect on his son despite their separation, expanded upon elsewhere in this app.)
Growing up as the watchmaker's son, in a three room apartment in Brooklyn, New York, was no doubt a difficult childhood for Gabriel. The family had a shop, which after Martin Gray left he continued to run, fixing and making watches with complicated internal workings with the help of both natural skill and his ability. He was, early on in the series socially inept; his interactions with Chandra and Elle both reflect the difficulties that he had in interacting with others.
His adopted mother, Virginia, has been described as being an unsound woman to have chosen to raise a child with, and she certainly reflects that impression. She was obsessed with snow globes, and since she never traveled she relied on Gabriel to collect them for her--at the time of her death he had collected all but one state, suggesting that he had traveled a lot. She was also deeply religious, and thinks of Gabriel as her angel. He, on the other hand, seems to no longer have any religious attachments at all. Throughout his childhood she was the one that insisted that he was special, that he was supposed to be more than just a watchmaker's son, and that he could get out the way she had always wanted to.
As a result of his adopted mother's insistence, and his own dreaming, Gabriel was quick to respond to Chandra Suresh's appeal for a meeting after his call, and became his devoted Patient Zero, subjecting himself to tests in the hope that he really was special. His relationship with Suresh was built on rocky ground, since for the first time in his life someone other than his mother was showing interest in him, and Gabriel deeply desired to please. When his ability was not detected by Suresh, and the attention began to wane, the relationship turned sour, and Gabriel quickly turned angry. Conversely, as soon as he knew that he was special he flew back to Suresh hoping to be welcomed by him, wanting desprately to impress him--and did, until Suresh realised that Gabriel was murdering other people and stealing their powers. At this point he shut Gabriel down, and in response Chandra Suresh became the first non-powered victim of Sylar. This demonstrated that Gabriel was unrestrained by morality or empathy; if someone displeased him or was in his way he would kill them--or at the very least almost kill them. In Chandra's case he knew too much; he knew that Sylar was Gabriel Gray, and consequently posed a threat. He also intended to warn people of the danger to them, much as Mohinder Suresh (his son) means to in the future.
Gabriel visited his first victim straight after his argument with Suresh about his not being special; he wanted to see for himself what that meant, and discovered a man who not only had an amazing ability (telekinesis) but was also afraid of it, and wanted it taken away. For someone who craved to be special as much as Gabriel did this was no doubt an insult of the highest order. How could someone with an ability like that want to be like everyone else? But more than that, he could instantly see it; see how Brian Davis was 'broken'--and wanted to get a closer look. Instinct played its part here, and like an animal instinctively knowing to swallow the food placed in its mouth, Gabriel killed and took Brian's ability. It's important to note here that Gabriel does many things by instinct, if not raw intuition.
The result, however, was not just his taking of power, which he would gleefully demonstrate to Chandra later, but remorse. At this point he hadn't come to terms with what he was, and killing was wrong; he attempted to commit suicide, and was prevented by Elle, who humiliated him when she caught him in the act. He built a wary relationship with her, not realising that she was in fact an undercover agent for the Company sent to test him. His second victim, and the one that solidifies his method and strengthens him into serial killer mode comes at this point with the death of Trevor. Elle, by bringing Trevor to the apartment and swooning over his power to explode glasses, triggers Gabriel's jealousy and his hunger, and he pins Trevor to the wall and instinctively uses telekinesis to take his power.
This is where the memories of Gabriel's father come in. Though Gabriel had never killed this way before, he did so by pointing his finger and literally slicing through to the brain, just as his father did. It's been stated in interviews that Gabriel takes his powers this way because he remembered, even despite the block, seeing his father do it.
Sylar's relationship with Elle becomes ever more complicated from hereon. She attempts to catch him Season 2-3 to impress her father, but when that fails Sylar kills him, and proceeds to try to take her power. This attempt leaves Elle broken, and forces her to seek help from Pinehearst.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. As Heroes' major villain, much of Sylar's history is explored during the course of the series. In fact, for the first half of Volume 1, Sylar is simply the name of a serial killer that the FBI are hunting for (i.e. he has killed in more than one state). After killing Suresh and stealing a fragment of his list, Sylar heads off to find more people with powers, driven by his hunger. He kills Molly's parents, though this is by no means his first murder. The FBI call them 'bizarre', on account of the missing brains of his victims, and Molly Walker's parents are certainly killed in a bizarre way; wife pinned to the bannister with cutlery, father frozen mid-bite with his empty head sawn in half.
Elsewhere a young man named Peter is told that in order to save the world he needs to save the cheerleader--from then on their fates are inexorably linked. Foiled by Matt (telepath) finding the young Molly Walker, sole survivor of the incident at their house, Sylar tries to take her back from the FBI. He escapes, but only after turning the FBI agent's gun on her before Matt's interference forces him to flee.
Stepping into a little cafe in Texas on the hunt for a cheerleader who supposedly saved a man from a burning train crash, Sylar meets a young waitress named Charlie (now bear with me, because this is where it gets complicated.) She has the ability to remember anything - everything she reads or is told - and therefore presents an inviting target. The first time through he kills her, but in a later season a time traveler named Hiro goes back and saves her instead, and Sylar instead cuts out the tumor in her brain and saves her life, and therefore doesn't get her ability at all (therefore photographic memory is not included on his power's list). In any case, he goes back to chasing down his cheerleader.
The girl involved, Claire Bennett, has in fact avoided being the focus of the press by not acknowledging the fact that it was she who was the hero, and another cheerleader had claimed the act as her own. When Sylar makes it to the school he kills the wrong cheerleader, and immediately realising his mistake pursues Claire instead. Peter, arriving just in time, battles Sylar, and the two fall off a balcony together, Sylar surviving only by keen use of his telekinesis. Peter--well, Peter, having absorbed Claire's healing ability by close proximity, survives.
Sylar is tranqued and carried off by The Company. Operating under the front Primatech Paper, the Company go about taking in specials as they discover their abilities and either wiping their memories and tagging them, permanently capture and study them, or bring them over to fight for their side. With Sylar, their intent is only to keep him alive long enough to study him; he's too dangerous to release.
Eden (who used to know Suresh) visits Sylar intent on ending him herself. She has the power to make people obey her words, and tells him that she intends to give him a gun and make him blow his own brains out. Sylar, however, pulls her through the glass with his telekinesis, and tells her that he's going to consume her ability. Rather than shoot him, Eden turns her gun on herself and ends her own life, and by destroying her own brain renders it useless to Sylar; her last act to deny him her ability.
Drugged and supposedly dying due to the experiments performed on him following this incident, Sylar lies in wait of his planned escape. With the ability to control the amount of drugs moving around his body, even slow his heart rate, Sylar tricks the Company doctor into thinking he's dead, and almost kills Noah Bennett as he makes his escape, telling him that he's going to find his daughter as he leaves.
Claire isn't at home when Sylar visits, posing as a colleague of Noah's from work. He speaks to Claire's mother, but when she becomes suspicious of him, Sylar throws her against a glass cabinet, and is forced to flee the home before Noah can apprehend him.
The next time Sylar is seen he's in New Jersey, having continued to look up the names on his list. The next is Zane Taylor, a man with the ability to melt objects. After he kills him and takes his power, the doorbell is rung, and Sylar meets for the first time the son of Chandra Suresh, Mohinder. He poses as Zane Taylor, agreeing to come with Mohinder to speak to more of the people on his father's list.
Dale Smither is the next on the list, a reclusive Massachusetts woman with superhearing. After Mohinder and 'Zane' speak to her, Sylar returns and kills her, taking her ability. However superhearing doesn't agree with him; he finds it difficult to control and at first it disrupts his other abilities. He goes back to New York with Mohinder, and offers to help him with the other people on his father's list. But Mohinder has wised up to him. He drugs Sylar, ties him to a chair and administers a sedative. When he wakes up, Mohinder uses a tuning fork to hurt him, then draws a gun--but as he fires, taking revenge for his father's death, the bullet stops mid-flight, and Sylar reveals that he turned off the sedative drip.
Sylar is foiled from choosing his next victim by Peter's arrival. He pins Peter against a wall, having already pinned Mohinder to the ceiling, and proceeds to attempt to take his power. Peter resists with telekinesis, throwing Sylar back, and turning invisible. Using the glass from the shattered bookcase he was thrown into, Sylar throws glass in all directions, catching Peter in the back of the neck with a large piece and killing him. Temporarily. It allows Mohinder, freed by the break in concentration, to knock Sylar out again with a sliding divider.
Waking up in the apartment to find both of them gone and the map destroyed, Sylar is saved by the fragment of a 9th Wonders comic book, which gives the name of the artist Issac Mendez and his studio address. He finds Mendez (who paints the future) waiting for him, surrounded by paintings of his own demise--and kills him. Using his new ability Sylar paints himself stalking Ted Sprague, the radioactive man, and attempts to ask Mohinder for help. Hiro and Ando listen from behind a painting. Not finding any council there he instead calls his mother and visits her. The incident doesn't go as he might hope. She doesn't listen to his concerns, and when he tries to show her his abilities she reacts as though he's a demon, and tries to stab him with a pair of scissors. Sylar defends himself, and his mother dies. In the moment afterward Hiro appears, sword in hand, having stopped time to try to kill him. Sylar, holding the blade, tells him to do it, and as Hiro fails he shatters the blade with ice. Left alone, he paints the impending destruction of New York city in his mother's blood.
The next stage of his plan is to get Ted Sprague caught by the FBI (he's wanted for murder and for allegedly having possession of radioactive materials, but in fact Ted is radioactive.) This all goes to plan and Ted is captured and driven away, allowing Sylar to hijack the van and kill Ted without endangering himself, and take his power. Now using Isaac's loft as a base, Sylar paints himself fighting Peter at Kirby Plaza, and realises that he's meant to be stopping Peter from exploding - i.e. he's supposed to be the hero. He goes to confront him, and is instead beaten down by everyone else, and laughs as he realises in fact that he is the one who triggers Peter's explosion. Distracted by this realisation, he fails to respond to Hiro's appearance, and the sword being driven through him. He falls to the ground and seems to die.
Volume 2
Sylar awakes on a deck chair on a beach, but he's not really on a deck chair on a beach. Instead he's been kidnapped, stitched up and left in the care of the illusionist Candice, deep in the Mexican jungle. He asks her to show him what's real, and when she does Sylar bashes her over the back of the head with a mug and tries to take her power, finding it odd that he fails. Thus begins his quest to discover why his powers have disappeared--but first Sylar stumbles out of the jungle and passes out on a road, where a young brother and sister couple fleeing the authorities find him.
The driver of the car, Derek, discovers that the two are wanted for murder and plans to reveal them to the cops, but Sylar kills him before he can, and leaves with the twins himself--but only after tricking them into revealing how their combined powers work. They want to go to New York and speak to Chandra Suresh (whom Sylar knows is dead), and ask him to try and take her ability away, but as he believes Mohinder might know what's been done to him, it seems like a reasonable place to start. Also he wants Maya's to be the first ability he takes when he recovers his own powers. Her misery literally kills people.
He helps the two to cross the border, by using Maya's powers, and at great risk to his own life. However his using her doesn't settle well with her brother, who is protective and sees through his manipulation. When they're left alone, Sylar tells Alejandro in English that he intends to kill both of them, and that even if he can't have her power, he'll keep her. As Maya is the English speaker out of the pair of them, Alejandro doesn't understand.
Sylar teaches Maya to control her own ability - i.e. making Alejandro's countering ability redundant - then when Alejandro confronts Sylar about the murder of his mother, he makes it clear to Maya that it was an accident, much like her own, and that his mother had made no effort to understand him. Having bonded with her, Sylar sees no reason to keep Alejandro around, and dispatches him during their next fight, leaving him, after sharing a passionate kiss with Maya, to continue their trip to New York alone.
When they make it to Mohinder's apartment, Sylar finds Molly there alone, and holds her hostage. He calls Mohinder to let him know to come home, and introduces him to Maya when he does. Mohinder tries to tell Maya that Sylar is a killer, but she shakes off the accusation. It's only when Sylar, revealing Mohinder's research, demonstrates that Mohinder has the cure and insists to him at gunpoint that he's given it that Maya seems to realise that Sylar isn't the man she thought he was. She gets angry, and is prepared to kill them both, but when Molly emerges from the bedroom dying she pulls back from the edge, and Mohinder reluctantly agrees to Sylar's terms.
They go to Mohinder's lab, which is Isaac's old loft, where Mohinder explains his research. Sylar, busy with Mohinder, doesn't pay much attention to Molly explaining her power (the ability to find people with abilities) to Maya, and so when she realises her brother is dead ("he isn't anywhere") she freaks out again. Sylar shoots her dead in frustration. Mohinder at last believes that the cure will work on Sylar, but first Sylar insists that it's tested on Maya, whom it cures of her wounds and brings back to life, thanks to it being a mix of Mohinder's blood and the regenerative cheerleader Claire's. He's just about to take the injection himself when Elle arrives, and in her surprise to see him, Sylar is given the opportunity to escape. He takes the cure with him, and gets zapped in the back with electricity just as he jumps out the window and escapes. Out in an alleyway he injects himself with the cure, and his telekinesis begins to return to him.
Volume 3
Coming immediately after the events of Season 2, Volume 3 is the first part of the two volume Season 3. However since Sylar is coming from barely a handful of episodes into this season (although a lot happens in that time) this is where his history section will shortly end.
With his powers restored, Sylar heads for Costa Verde to confront Claire, and take her power. She's at home alone, and managed to strike him unconscious for a brief time with one of her cheerleading trophies, though Sylar is clearly enjoying the chase. He recovers quickly, closing all the exits and pulling all the blinds, throwing the house into darkness, then proceeds to capture Claire and take her ability. Because she can heal, his action doesn't kill her, and he leaves her alive. He does, however, dispatch two Company agents as he leaves, with no effort at all.
Now his need for revenge turns to the Company itself. Sylar breaks into Primatech paper and kills Robert 'Bob' Bishop, the head of the company, taking his ability of being able to turn any metal into gold. He then throws Elle through a viewing window. Noah shoots him, but Sylar heals, mocking him with the ability that he's stolen from Noah's daughter, all the while with Peter - trapped in the body of a sound-manipulating killer named Jesse imprisoned nearby - curses and yells for him to stop. Ignoring him, and having knocked Noah unconscious, Sylar turns back on Elle, intent on taking her ability, but as he begins to cut into her she lets out a massive burst of electricity, knocking Sylar out and releasing the other prisoners in the cells, all of them dangerous criminals.
When he stirs awake Sylar is on a table in one of the holding cells, under the effect of strong sedatives, and Angela Petrelli is with him. She tells him that he is her son (this is a lie, and at first Sylar believes it to be one), however his desire to be a part of a family, particularly a family in which he would be Peter's brother, is transparent, blinding him with the happy lie.
Angela, twisted individual that she is, brings Sylar a woman from whom to take an ability, this one Clairsentience, or the ability to read information from objects. Sylar is then made into Noah's new partner, though Noah loathes him and wants him dead, and the two go out on a mission together to recapture the escaped Level 5 specials. They're holding up a bank, which Noah enters without Sylar in an attempt to settle things himself. He ends up in trouble quickly, and though Peter (still trapped in Jesse's body) uses his ability of sound manipulation to knock everyone down, a moment later Peter is gone (it's complicated, but basically his future self came and took him away, leaving the bad guy in his place, right at the worst possible moment). In any case, Sylar rips through the convicts, accidentally allows Knox (fear eating) escape, kills Jesse and takes his power, and the only one of them that gets returned to Level 5 is the pyrokinetic Flint. Sylar returns to his cell.
Shortly after this Peter, freshly returned from a terrible future in which Nathan was the President of America, Sylar blew up Costa Verde and Claire is a vicious killer hell bent on killing her own uncle, where everyone in the world has abilities and it's on the brink of ripping the world in half, appears in his cell. He's been taught how to use Sylar's ability by his future self, but the result is that he feels the same impossible to deal with hunger that Sylar is barely learning to begin to cope with himself. They fight, and Peter breaks Sylar's neck, then turns to kill Angela who has just arrived. Sylar, recovering, saves Angela's life, and leaves Peter in her hands when she promises to look after him.
Meanwhile, Noah has arranged to take Sylar on another mission, this one to capture a man named Stephen Canfield who can create transdimensional vortexes. He sets it up deliberately to try and kill Sylar once and for all, but Claire is there when they arrive, trying to speak to Canfield herself. The desperate criminal creates a vortex in order to give himself time to escape, and Sylar saves Claire from falling into it. At the same time, his clairsentience gives him an idea of the pain and grief she's been suffering because of him. He tries to apologise, but she wants none of it, angry with her father for working with him while at the same time trying to keep her out of the loop. When Noah tries to trade Canfield's freedom for him opening a vortex under Sylar where he waits in the car, Canfield instead creates a vortex and steps into it, disappearing himself from existence. Once again, Sylar returns to his cell.
After being visited by Daphne, who's collecting people for Pinehearst (secretly run by a not-dead Arthur Petrelli), Sylar turns to Peter for help. 'Their' mother has been put into a psychic coma, and he needs Peter's help to read her mind and find out who was behind the attack. Peter sees the Pinehearst symbol, and after drawing it, Sylar produces the card Daphne gave him, complete with said symbol. They prepare to leave, but Sylar suggests Peter stay behind and let him check out Pinehearst by himself. Instead of succumbing, Peter and Sylar fight, again with Peter taking the upper hand. He declares that he's 'the most special', and after carefully drugging Sylar and laying him out in the safety of his cell, he heads to Pinehearst himself.
Reincarnated History: The De Angelis family was an institution. They had existed in this city since its conception, one of the first Italian families to settle in the area now known as Little Italy. Nero, father to three brothers and a sister, was the direct descendent of those first Italian settlers, and being the eldest he inherited the largest house, the biggest bank account, and more importantly the position as head not only of his own brood but of the entire De Angelis empire. Perhaps they weren’t the most influential family in Locke City, but they were large enough to be a threat, and so they kept to their own turf, small business - money laundering, illegal gambling, gun running, trading locally in black market goods, but absolutely no drugs. That business belonged elsewhere, and getting between others and their money was a good way to start a war.
The family, vastly spread in every direction, are strongly Catholic, and go to church every Sunday. Besides Dante’s father and his three brothers, there are cousins and second cousins and so on, most of them still living in Little Italy like their forebears, although some have moved out of Locke City altogether.
As a young man Nero was the reckless sort, leading his brothers into all kind of nonsense in his efforts to prove himself to his father. Marrying tempered his recklessness, and it wasn’t until he hit forty that Nero had a crisis of the middle aged variety. He took his brothers on one last ‘glory days’ job, robbing a bank not because he needed the money but because of the thrill of it, and almost ended up throwing his life away. He was locked away for three years for aggravated assault, a massive cut-down from the original sentence, played by the talented lawyers he surrounded himself with. Dante was ten at the time. To him, his father’s arrest made more sense than it did for his younger brother, and he was old enough to resent the role of the arresting policemen, and envy the slick mob lawyers that visited their home throughout the affair. During the time of their father's imprisonment and after their sister's first miscarriage, their mother began to drink.
By the time Nero came out of jail, Dante was a teenager. His elder brother, Leo, was just beginning his career in law, and he knew he didn’t want to be like him. Nor did he have any intention of becoming like their father, a man whose respect existed only because of his name, and not because of his position in society. Not old enough to have had his fate predecided for him, nor young enough to be dismissed entirely, Dante expressed his intention to go into the medical career path, and so when he left highschool that was exactly what he did.
Highschool had been easy enough for the young man, albeit difficult to deal with while growing in their elder brother's shadow. Leo had been a bully; quarterback, prom King. If there was a title or medal to win, Leonardo De Angelis had it. He did his best to do nothing that his brother had done before him. Dante learned to play the oboe and the clarinet, excelled in science and literature, and won a number of prizes himself. A quiet and focused student, but charismatic with his teachers, it was a breeze for him to move to a college of his choice; or in Dante's case, a medical school.
It took eight and a half years of his life, but Dante qualified as a doctor specialising in psychiatry. Gabriel took to the medical career like a fish to water, finding he had considerable aptitude for it, and a steady hand with a knife. Though he was urged toward microsurgery or something similar, he instead chose to pursue psychiatry, believing that it would offer him more flexibility and independence. While in medical school and during his time interning at various hospitals and clinics, Gabriel followed the family tradition of networking, getting to know as wide a variety of people as possible. Character witnesses, you see.
It was quite an investment, and one that his parents immediately began to take advantage of. No sooner had the paperwork gone through on Gabriel's new property ( an LLC in a handsome three-story Beaux-Arts style house, with patient and doctor access to the courtyard garden behind it ) did they begin to take advantage of their son's new credibility--and his RX scripts. At the time of his first Echo, Dante has been practicing psychiatry for less than a year. He has to learn how to manage his new practice, the therapists and nurses under his employ, his parents increased pressure to risk his respectability for the Family, as well as his own road of self discovery and the danger that being one of the enlightened will bring not only to him, but to everything he thinks he knows.
As if that wasn't enough, his father has recently been arrested in a high profile drug scandal - ridiculous, since nobody in their family deals with drugs, and this is cocaine, not prescription medication. But a recent argument with Lucca - the one that triggered his brother's first Echo - might give him more answers in respect to that. A stolen RX pad is just the start of his troubles with his littlest brother.
First Echo: I'd like for Dante to have been attacked by snakes on the subway on his way home; his defense throwing up his hand as though to push them away, would be ineffective, and at the time seem stupid, but he would later recall the strong feeling that it should be able to do something, as though if he tried hard enough he could push them away, move objects, and perhaps even more. He won't actually recover his telekinesis with this Echo, just the strong belief in his having the ability, and no knowledge of why.
Preincarnation Personality:
Driven by order, when Sylar discovers that something is broken there is a necessity to fix it; in this way he's somewhat obsessive compulsive, though it also relates to his ability. He instantly fixes Suresh's watch, and insists on repairing the broken clock that belonged to his adopted father, even though it obviously displeases his mother. In later seasons he's shown having trouble controlling this compulsive behaviour, but doing so regardless for the sake of his son. This also reflects on the hunger he has for abilities, and seeing, wanting, but not being able to do anything about it is stressful to him. His ability, his desire to see how it works is at its basis primitive, and drives him to extraordinary limits. As a result, taking an ability is like getting his fix, it doesn't matter what the ability is, and using it is exciting for him. It also explains why he favours his first ability, telekinesis, and because of its flexibility it can be used to great effect, in ways that other people's whole powers are necessary for; i.e. in a later season: he can use telekinesis to force people's actions much like the Puppet Master, and consequently doesn't bother to steal this power.
As Sylar, Gabriel does not take powers because they are useful, or dangerous, he takes them because his hunger forces him to, and as a result it is not exactly pick and mix for him. His victims have been all shapes and sizes, and they could have had the power to clap on and off lights for all Sylar cared. The point, after all, is seeing how it works.
Gabriel is an excellent actor, mostly due to the fact that he is a talented, fluid liar, but also because he is a mimic in all ways; not simply with his powers. After taking Zane's powers, he employs an element of Zane's humanity in his interactions with Mohinder, for example, wringing his hands together and appearing anxious, in a perfect mimic of how Zane introduced himself to Gabriel in the first place. He steals names from the things he hears or sees without hesitation; for instance he takes the name 'Sylar' from his watch, and the name 'Drew O'Grady' from a combination of news headlines: 'The President drew fire' and 'O'Grady farm to be purchased back'. In later seasons he plays an FBI agent to the cops with fluid ease, and has even mimicked Matt Parkman enough to pass with his wife, bevermind successfully being Nathan Petrelli for months.
However, his intentions are not always well masked, and they slip through the cracks no matter how good his play acting is, because his personality is inherently an addictive one, and in some ways he feels a need to be recognised, and in others his hunger is something that he cannot mask completely because it is so much a part of him. This is usually most true of his potential victims, or people who are routinely suspicious--say because their husbands are secretly working for the Company. He is intimidating regardless of his attempts to appear otherwise--fine when you're playing a politician, but to a certain degree difficult to deal with post season 4, where Sylar gives off a distinct vibe of intimidating even when he's no longer a killer.
In general there seems to be very little effect on Gabriel as a result of absorbing other people's powers. Bennet and the company suggest that Gabriel would become more and more mentally unstable as he absorbs different facets of people's personalities along with their powers, but in fact this only becomes a problem when he absorbs his shapeshifting ability. It is common speculation that when Gabriel loses control of his powers when demonstrating them to his mother it's due to this erosion of his identity, but he claims when arguing with her (after shapeshifting into her) that he wanted to kill her, seeing as she'd called him a monster. He shows no other signs of his sense of self eroding, only a distinct evolution of perspective based on events and his own failures and successes.
Consistently, Sylar did not continue to maintain a charade once his true motives, character, or abilities were recognised, and was quick to note any changes in behaviour that suggested that his act has been seen through. This failed him with Mohinder, who poisoned him before his behaviour fluctuated, but not so in the case of Sandra Bennet, whom he catches the moment she realises something is wrong. Again this intuition bears true throughout the series, because it's just so easy for him to read other people. Still, there is limited pride in successfully appearing to be someone else; Gabriel is proud of being himself, and seems almost relieved to let himself loose again--for instance in a later season, after spending too long as a government agent, and later as Nathan. He writes his name in blood to make his point, after losing sight of himself after taking on his shapeshifting ability.
Sylar finds a vicarious pleasure in messing with the heads of his victims, even to the point of allowing them to believe that he's helpless, or that they're winning. In Mohinder's case he plays possum all the way up to the point where he is shot at, then reveals that he manipulated the switch on the catheta with his telekinesis in order to prevent the drugs being fed into his system. He plays dead in order to escape the Company, too, and playing clueless to other people's plans is something he clearly enjoys. He revels in the feeling of malevolent power that comes with knowing that he can step in at any time, but is despite that allowing someone else to feel like they're in control--simply because it makes it that much more of a blow to them when he reveals otherwise. As a matter of course such delays also allow him to learn more about people's plans or motives; they are inevitably more talkative when they think they're in control of a situation.
Gabriel has been shown to hesitate when it comes to killing children, or to be extra protective to them, however short of killing the cheerleader, he hasn't been in any position to kill a child since Molly, who hid from him when he killed her parents. In the future he knowingly spares a child, Luke: "And I let you live, which is kind of a big deal for me!" (though it's heavily implied that Luke is his brother) and as stated before he is protective of his son. He also spares Noah, making it clear that it isn't just children related to him that he's willing to give a free pass.
Gabriel is extremely contrary. This is again due to his control issues; he doesn't want to be manipulated by anyone, because now that he's tasted freedom and the ability to control his own life, he wants to keep it that way. This causes tension with Angela Petrelli in a later season, and also with the Company. Tell him to do something one way, and he will refuse and do it another, just to be difficult. This holds true. In Brave New World (S4), rather than kill Doyle, he simply strings him up like a Christmas Tree. Simply put, Sylar has a twisted and remarkable sense of humour, and employs it to devastating effect in many ways. He mocks his victims openly, and employs that dark humour ruthlessly, often callously. In Isaac's case, he mocked him for not being big enough for his power, making it clear that he had no empathy with his victims--ironic, since his power is later revealed to be empathetic at its basic level, and something that is the basis of his later regrets.
As he was developing into a serial killer, his moments of emotional backlash grew less common. He originally didn't do much planning, and was oppurtunistic and particularly flamboyant in his practice, but with his confidence came more order, and better applications of his powers. Rather than lose his temper in New York when his chance to take Ted's ability seemed impossible, he quite calmly phones in a tip to the police that ends up with Ted being caught and driven out of the city, so that he can follow them and take Ted's power at his leisure, and without Peter or Noah there to intervene. His instant use of Zane Taylor's name when Mohinder appears on his doorstep is also clever and immediate, just as when asked for a saliva sample he goes back to the other room to take one from the dead man in the kitchen. He is actually brilliant and scheming when it's necessary, with a sharp mind, sharp intelligence and sharper wit. The more confident he became, the less emotional he was.
Gabriel initially did not think that he would kill without purpose (i.e. people without powers), but it was a line that slowly faded further away as time goes on. He kills Chandra Suresh, who has no power, and in later seasons despite learning a way to take his powers without killing, he still kills for the sake of it--not because he has to to take the power, but because his hunger demands it. At first he shows genuine regret, though short lived, and this is echoed once more when he learns that he, rather than Ted, is meant to be the exploding man (in fact, Peter is the one who explodes) and may be responsible for the deaths of all the people in New York City. At this point he sought redemption from his mother:
"Mom — Mom, don't. Don't, it's just... maybe I don't have to be special. That's okay to just be a normal watchmaker. Can't you just tell me that's enough?"
At this point he wanted her to agree; to say that perhaps he doesn't have to be special because he's always been special to her just how he is, or something like that. She doesn't, insisting that he can be great; that maybe he could even be President one day (foreshadowing a possible future). He didn't want to be responsible for those deaths--but upon killing her and painting the exploding city in her blood on the floor, it became clear to him that the future was unavoidable, and he went out to face it, or maybe even to make one last determined effort to prevent it.
Any differences: A great number of things differentiate Dante De Angelis from Gabriel Gray; but they come down to two major categories of changes: Family, and Powers.
What catalysts transformed the earnest, quiet and brilliant Gabriel into the monster he was to become were a combination of his mother's determination that he could do anything, and her horror when confronted with those abilities--and the hunger that came with Gabriel's intuitive aptitude, a poison of corruption that drove him to want to know more, to understand more; ergo to kill more.
At 27 - and younger than Gabriel was when his ability began to manifest - Dante already has power; power that he's earned both by his name and his profession. He's given respect, looked up to as a decent member of society in the daylight and a powerful heir to the De Angelis line otherwise. There is no need for him to prove himself, and while he shares the belief that he can do anything, Dante has never required other people to tell him so.
He was neither an orphan, nor the son of a watchmaker, and is stable and confident before his powers begin to manifest, rather than needing them in order to find some higher purpose.
While he can be forthright, Dante is a brilliant liar and psychologically manipulative. He has the same dark twisted streak as Sylar, but unlike him has no desire for eventual redemption from his crimes, after all he was born to a certain kind of mob royalty, and believes that his name is the only permission he needs to do whatever he pleases. There is a clinical superiority to him in his approach to medicine--he is far from empathic with his patients, although he does retain enough charisma to fake a decent bedside manner.
Unlike Sylar he has iron family ties, is strongly religious, and does not aspire beyond what he's already achieved. A comfortable, rich lifestyle, several expensive cars and a cookie cutter family of his own--nothing less will do for a De Angelis.
While Sylar is a lone wolf, Dante is a member of a pack, and a leader in his own right (he owns his own, albeit-paid-for-by-mommy-and-daddy) medical practice, and has two therapists and two mental health nurses employed under the Angel of Mercy Medical umbrella. He surrounds himself with people whom he can manipulate to one task or another, and can therefore call on for favors (or alibis) at will.
Also, Dante is fiercely loyal to his mother and father. He may not have much love for them when all's said and done, but loyalty, respect and honor, as well as family tradition and duty, are all well impressed upon him. He's Italian, it's in his blood. Any slight against them will be dealt with swiftly and sharply, because in his life to insult one's parents is worse than insulting the person themselves.
Abilities: 'Briefly', his powers are as follows:
Intuitive aptitude - Sylar's original power is to by intuition and examination completely understand how something works, and to intuitively learn how to use it or fix it. He has a compulsion to use this power which presents itself as an intense hunger, and uses it to take the powers of others by directly examining their brains.
This power is limited by his human memory, and whichever weaknesses come with the powers he takes, though it's demonstrable that he is usually better at using whichever power he takes than the original person to have that power. Sylar can tell if a clock is broken from across a room, and likewise can see what a person's power is and how it works by observation alone. He can tell when people are 'broken', i.e. if they have a blood clot in their brain.
Telekinesis - Gabriel can narrow his power down to creating incisions through bone, literally rending the flesh and bone apart with force, use it to augment his own strength, to throw objects or people from or across a great distance. He has flipped huge trucks with this power, shielded himself from bullets, and can manipulate people (or himself) physically, raise them (or himself) off the ground, or strangle or kill them without touching. In general, Sylar needs to use gestures to manipulate this power, which reduces it in a fight to things he can do with just two hands. It also has a power limit. The truck was probably at the top of his power level, and it needed both hands and a lot of concentration. The effort that Peter uses on breaking open a vault door using the same power causes him to have a nose bleed and seem weakened by the effort.
Precognition - While looking at blank canvas, Sylar can project from his mind an image onto the paper, and then paint what he sees. It doesn't have to be paint; at one point Sylar paints an image in his own mother's blood. The future can be changed, and therefore isn't a certainty, suggesting that what is painted is only a possible future. Also it can be used to paint people in the present, or even in the distant past.
I've only ever used this power in games occasionally, to 'predict' plots that are deliberately sent my way. It can be a fun power to play with, event wise.
Induced radioactivity - This is the power I'm most worried about, and the most willing to work with the mods on. It includes: the ability to produce radiation on a broad spectrum, i.e. everything from heating up cold coffee, to creating a burst of electro magnetic energy to take out a building's electricity, to creating an outright nuclear explosion. It comes hand in hand with radioactive immunity.
This power needs some limiting, as in its canon form the power is sufficient to destroy the center of New York city. I'd like him to still be able to use it to explode or slow burn within a small area. Say, the area of a small warehouse, with it being limited in its reusability--i.e. he would tire very quickly through its use - to the point of fainting if it was used to these proposed limits. The most limiting part of this power, in my opinion, is Sylar's canonical lack of desire to explode in the first place, but mod permission would be sought before using it with any effect, assuming the possibility ever came up.
Shattering - Essentially the ability to shatter objects from a distance. Trevor is shown to shatter glass in demonstration, and Gabriel never seems to use this power with his victims, so it's not shown what the limit of this power is. For the sake of consistency, Gabriel will be able to shatter objects that are naturally fragile - glass, chocolate eggs, sheet ice etc, though his telekinesis would actually be capable of much the same thing at this point, rendering the shattering moot.
Freezing - After he stole this ability Gabriel froze its user, demonstrating that he can freeze an entire person within seconds. He does not have to be touching someone to do this. He can also freeze his environment, again without touching, and cover significant expanses with ice. He can freeze metal to the point of shattering. Further, this ability comes alongside some natural immunity to the cold. It's rarely if ever used. Sylar turns water into snow at one point.
Melting - This ability is a change of state ability. With direct application the state of an object can be changed from solid to liquid without seemingly affecting its temperature in any way. For the sake of consistency, and because it's not made clear, these objects are not melted by heat and therefore do not become solid when they return to room temperature, but consistently remain liquid.
Enhanced hearing - What it says on the tin. The user can hear another person's heartbeat, hear cockroaches scuttling about, or can hear a pin drop from miles away. The original user listens to loud music in order to prevent the headaches associated with the power. Sylar at first shows similar weakness, however since then he seems to have developed his use of the ability, able to listen to conversations across a crowded plaza in New York, or hear and recognise someone's heartbeat.
Rapid cell regeneration - Sylar can heal from small injuries, or, like the girl he's taken this ability from, regrow body parts. As suggested, I'm happy to slow down the body part regeneration to a few days if necessary and keep the rapid healing as per canon. As in canon at this point, embedding something into the back of his brain will temporarily kill him--temporary only in that it needs to be removed for him to revive. Beheading him or blowing his head off will kill him permanently, and it's also implied that if his healing power is turned off, via a power null or by embedding something in his brain, he can also be killed permanently by burning.
Otherwise, so long as there is nothing preventing his body from returning to its original state, he should 'revive' from a state of apparent death irregardless of whether he's jumped from a building, been hit by a train, or shot repeatedly in the chest. He can naturally expel bullets, but not knives, which would need to be removed by hand. Dislocated shoulders or broken ribs, flayed skin, it all needs to be encouraged back into position or removed in order for the healing to occur.
It's probably reasonable to assume that throwing him out an airlock or into a sun, or otherwise destroying his body faster than he can heal, will kill him with just as much certainty. He could, however, survive being the source of a nuclear disaster. Go figure.
Further, this power causes the blood of the user to be able to used to regenerate the cells of others, passing on the healing power temporarily to someone else. It could potentially kill anyone with cancer, speeding the process along. Obviously it can't heal someone whose head has been blown off.
Alchemy - Sylar has the ability to turn any object - no matter what it's made of - into gold. It's literally a Midas touch, applying to people as much as objects, but comes without the sideeffect of not being able to control it. It doesn't have a canon limit, but it should only apply to a small area.
I feel like I should point out that Sylar isn't uncounterable - the creators made a point of that, since they needed ways to work around his abilities and have the heroes win - but he is a power house in many ways. He is susceptible to telepathy, can lose his memory, be neutralised completely by power nulls, and on top of that suffers human weaknesses too; he can be knocked unconscious or killed, though the killing is a little more technical than pointing and clicking.
Sylar can and does kill people with his powers - he was a serial killer, that's sort of his thing - and as such I have always employed rigorous permissions when it comes to using their extremes, which are rarely used even in the series. Sylar demonstrates in How to Stop an Exploding Man, and later when he meets his father, that he has little interest in killing things that are of no threat, nor have anything to offer him, and much more importantly, IC consequences are always an option if this route is pursued.
The way these powers are recovered and the effect his personality, between incarnations, has on him, will effect the way he ends up using them, as elaborated in the changes to his personality highlighted above.
Roleplay Sample - Third Person: Claire Bennet's heart beat pounded at a million miles an hour. Following her around the house, watching her run at the slightest provocation, trying to find the will to fight back--there was something wonderful about it. How long had it been since he'd really allowed himself to enjoy the thrill of the chase? How long since the last time his victim's heart had thundered it's last desperate pounding life in one last ditch effort to stay that way?
Fear of death was a powerful motivator, but no more powerful than Sylar's hunger. This power that he'd failed to collect it the first time, now represented something so much bigger. It was a loose thread, a necessity, a challenge, and he couldn't allow someone who'd slipped through his fingers to carry on unmolested, especially when the power that Claire had was such a useful one.
With this power, he could live forever.
Sylar backed away from the door where Claire had hidden herself. The thrill of the chase wasn't helped by just throwing the doors open and charging inside, even though he could have done it easily. The prey had to believe it had a chance of escaping, even though Sylar had locked the entire house down. Nothing was going in or out unless he wanted it to.
He sank back into the darkness he'd created with blinds and broken lightbulbs, waiting for Claire to emerge at the thought that Sylar had gone. She came at last, tried the door, head straight for the kitchen, and when Sylar caught up with her she drove a knife through his chest.
Well that just settled it, didn't it? There was no way he could possibly leave without her power now.
Winded, bleeding, his hand to his chest, Sylar pulled himself forward, following after her as she made a last ditch effort to escape. Her hope had transformed once more into fear, the adrenaline only accentuated her ability to him. Like a snake feeling vibrations, Sylar could practically feel her ability now. It tasted copper on the tip of his tongue. This was the moment.
Excitement snarled up in him, and he threw his hand up, caught her in a telekinetic grip, and raised his other hand up to cut her open. Everything now was simple instinct, guided by the art of his doing it a dozen times before. She had something he wanted - and now needed - and he wasn't prepared to leave without it.
Roleplay Sample - Network:
Text;
Such an elegant method of communication, and what an interesting situation I seem to have found myself in, after all. This network connects me with so many fascinating individuals; I simply can't wait to meet all of you.
My name is Doctor Dante De Angelis. I'm sure the name is familiar to some of you. That's Dante of the Locke City De Angelis. I own the Angel of Mercy medical practice in Little Italy, and am a qualified psychiatrist.
Although far be it for me to peddle my wares to such a captive audience, I suppose I would be regress in not doing so. If anyone happens to be crucially in need of medical attention, and doesn't have time for the no doubt uncomfortable questions Locke City Hospital will ask--well...if you must ask for unsolicited medical advice, then I suppose the least I can do is offer my services. For a fee, of course.
Name: Reg
Are you over 15? Yes
Contact: Regasssa on AIM, DW, Plurk and at hotmail dot com.
IC Information:
Name: Preincarnation: Gabriel Gray, Reincarnation: Dante De Angelis
Canon and medium: Heroes; Live Action
Age: Preincarnation: 30, Reincarnation: 27
Preincarnation Species: Human (Evolved)
Preincarnation Appearance: Here
Any differences: Here Dante wears glasses, and greases his hair back only when he's at work. The style gets lifted back out when he leaves work, but the glasses normally stay on. Outside of work he can be seen wearing colorful and casual clothes, and has a great passion for unusual or dated hats.
Preincarnated History:
"When I was a kid, I used to wish some stranger would come and tell me my family wasn't really my family. They weren't bad people, they were just... insignificant. And I wanted to be different. Special. I wanted to change. A new name; a new life. The watchmaker's son... tick... became a watchmaker. It is so futile. And I wanted to be... important."
Gabriel was adopted by his biological uncle Martin and aunt Virginia Gray, from his parents; Samson Gray and an unnamed mother. Gabriel saw his parents as insignificant, and like many people his age saw his life as mundane and imagined that it was going nowhere; that he'd be trapped forever in the same routine. Unfortunately despite also being special, and having the same power as Gabriel, his biological father Samson is also insignificant. His meeting with his son when it happens is anticlimatic--he is dying of cancer, alone and paranoid. A complete let down, and someone whom Sylar - despite having the ability to heal and essentially live forever - leaves to die from his cancer. (I should point out that at this canon point Sylar hasn't met his father, but I bring it up because Samson has a psychological effect on his son despite their separation, expanded upon elsewhere in this app.)
Growing up as the watchmaker's son, in a three room apartment in Brooklyn, New York, was no doubt a difficult childhood for Gabriel. The family had a shop, which after Martin Gray left he continued to run, fixing and making watches with complicated internal workings with the help of both natural skill and his ability. He was, early on in the series socially inept; his interactions with Chandra and Elle both reflect the difficulties that he had in interacting with others.
His adopted mother, Virginia, has been described as being an unsound woman to have chosen to raise a child with, and she certainly reflects that impression. She was obsessed with snow globes, and since she never traveled she relied on Gabriel to collect them for her--at the time of her death he had collected all but one state, suggesting that he had traveled a lot. She was also deeply religious, and thinks of Gabriel as her angel. He, on the other hand, seems to no longer have any religious attachments at all. Throughout his childhood she was the one that insisted that he was special, that he was supposed to be more than just a watchmaker's son, and that he could get out the way she had always wanted to.
As a result of his adopted mother's insistence, and his own dreaming, Gabriel was quick to respond to Chandra Suresh's appeal for a meeting after his call, and became his devoted Patient Zero, subjecting himself to tests in the hope that he really was special. His relationship with Suresh was built on rocky ground, since for the first time in his life someone other than his mother was showing interest in him, and Gabriel deeply desired to please. When his ability was not detected by Suresh, and the attention began to wane, the relationship turned sour, and Gabriel quickly turned angry. Conversely, as soon as he knew that he was special he flew back to Suresh hoping to be welcomed by him, wanting desprately to impress him--and did, until Suresh realised that Gabriel was murdering other people and stealing their powers. At this point he shut Gabriel down, and in response Chandra Suresh became the first non-powered victim of Sylar. This demonstrated that Gabriel was unrestrained by morality or empathy; if someone displeased him or was in his way he would kill them--or at the very least almost kill them. In Chandra's case he knew too much; he knew that Sylar was Gabriel Gray, and consequently posed a threat. He also intended to warn people of the danger to them, much as Mohinder Suresh (his son) means to in the future.
Gabriel visited his first victim straight after his argument with Suresh about his not being special; he wanted to see for himself what that meant, and discovered a man who not only had an amazing ability (telekinesis) but was also afraid of it, and wanted it taken away. For someone who craved to be special as much as Gabriel did this was no doubt an insult of the highest order. How could someone with an ability like that want to be like everyone else? But more than that, he could instantly see it; see how Brian Davis was 'broken'--and wanted to get a closer look. Instinct played its part here, and like an animal instinctively knowing to swallow the food placed in its mouth, Gabriel killed and took Brian's ability. It's important to note here that Gabriel does many things by instinct, if not raw intuition.
The result, however, was not just his taking of power, which he would gleefully demonstrate to Chandra later, but remorse. At this point he hadn't come to terms with what he was, and killing was wrong; he attempted to commit suicide, and was prevented by Elle, who humiliated him when she caught him in the act. He built a wary relationship with her, not realising that she was in fact an undercover agent for the Company sent to test him. His second victim, and the one that solidifies his method and strengthens him into serial killer mode comes at this point with the death of Trevor. Elle, by bringing Trevor to the apartment and swooning over his power to explode glasses, triggers Gabriel's jealousy and his hunger, and he pins Trevor to the wall and instinctively uses telekinesis to take his power.
This is where the memories of Gabriel's father come in. Though Gabriel had never killed this way before, he did so by pointing his finger and literally slicing through to the brain, just as his father did. It's been stated in interviews that Gabriel takes his powers this way because he remembered, even despite the block, seeing his father do it.
Sylar's relationship with Elle becomes ever more complicated from hereon. She attempts to catch him Season 2-3 to impress her father, but when that fails Sylar kills him, and proceeds to try to take her power. This attempt leaves Elle broken, and forces her to seek help from Pinehearst.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. As Heroes' major villain, much of Sylar's history is explored during the course of the series. In fact, for the first half of Volume 1, Sylar is simply the name of a serial killer that the FBI are hunting for (i.e. he has killed in more than one state). After killing Suresh and stealing a fragment of his list, Sylar heads off to find more people with powers, driven by his hunger. He kills Molly's parents, though this is by no means his first murder. The FBI call them 'bizarre', on account of the missing brains of his victims, and Molly Walker's parents are certainly killed in a bizarre way; wife pinned to the bannister with cutlery, father frozen mid-bite with his empty head sawn in half.
Elsewhere a young man named Peter is told that in order to save the world he needs to save the cheerleader--from then on their fates are inexorably linked. Foiled by Matt (telepath) finding the young Molly Walker, sole survivor of the incident at their house, Sylar tries to take her back from the FBI. He escapes, but only after turning the FBI agent's gun on her before Matt's interference forces him to flee.
Stepping into a little cafe in Texas on the hunt for a cheerleader who supposedly saved a man from a burning train crash, Sylar meets a young waitress named Charlie (now bear with me, because this is where it gets complicated.) She has the ability to remember anything - everything she reads or is told - and therefore presents an inviting target. The first time through he kills her, but in a later season a time traveler named Hiro goes back and saves her instead, and Sylar instead cuts out the tumor in her brain and saves her life, and therefore doesn't get her ability at all (therefore photographic memory is not included on his power's list). In any case, he goes back to chasing down his cheerleader.
The girl involved, Claire Bennett, has in fact avoided being the focus of the press by not acknowledging the fact that it was she who was the hero, and another cheerleader had claimed the act as her own. When Sylar makes it to the school he kills the wrong cheerleader, and immediately realising his mistake pursues Claire instead. Peter, arriving just in time, battles Sylar, and the two fall off a balcony together, Sylar surviving only by keen use of his telekinesis. Peter--well, Peter, having absorbed Claire's healing ability by close proximity, survives.
Sylar is tranqued and carried off by The Company. Operating under the front Primatech Paper, the Company go about taking in specials as they discover their abilities and either wiping their memories and tagging them, permanently capture and study them, or bring them over to fight for their side. With Sylar, their intent is only to keep him alive long enough to study him; he's too dangerous to release.
Eden (who used to know Suresh) visits Sylar intent on ending him herself. She has the power to make people obey her words, and tells him that she intends to give him a gun and make him blow his own brains out. Sylar, however, pulls her through the glass with his telekinesis, and tells her that he's going to consume her ability. Rather than shoot him, Eden turns her gun on herself and ends her own life, and by destroying her own brain renders it useless to Sylar; her last act to deny him her ability.
Drugged and supposedly dying due to the experiments performed on him following this incident, Sylar lies in wait of his planned escape. With the ability to control the amount of drugs moving around his body, even slow his heart rate, Sylar tricks the Company doctor into thinking he's dead, and almost kills Noah Bennett as he makes his escape, telling him that he's going to find his daughter as he leaves.
Claire isn't at home when Sylar visits, posing as a colleague of Noah's from work. He speaks to Claire's mother, but when she becomes suspicious of him, Sylar throws her against a glass cabinet, and is forced to flee the home before Noah can apprehend him.
The next time Sylar is seen he's in New Jersey, having continued to look up the names on his list. The next is Zane Taylor, a man with the ability to melt objects. After he kills him and takes his power, the doorbell is rung, and Sylar meets for the first time the son of Chandra Suresh, Mohinder. He poses as Zane Taylor, agreeing to come with Mohinder to speak to more of the people on his father's list.
Dale Smither is the next on the list, a reclusive Massachusetts woman with superhearing. After Mohinder and 'Zane' speak to her, Sylar returns and kills her, taking her ability. However superhearing doesn't agree with him; he finds it difficult to control and at first it disrupts his other abilities. He goes back to New York with Mohinder, and offers to help him with the other people on his father's list. But Mohinder has wised up to him. He drugs Sylar, ties him to a chair and administers a sedative. When he wakes up, Mohinder uses a tuning fork to hurt him, then draws a gun--but as he fires, taking revenge for his father's death, the bullet stops mid-flight, and Sylar reveals that he turned off the sedative drip.
Sylar is foiled from choosing his next victim by Peter's arrival. He pins Peter against a wall, having already pinned Mohinder to the ceiling, and proceeds to attempt to take his power. Peter resists with telekinesis, throwing Sylar back, and turning invisible. Using the glass from the shattered bookcase he was thrown into, Sylar throws glass in all directions, catching Peter in the back of the neck with a large piece and killing him. Temporarily. It allows Mohinder, freed by the break in concentration, to knock Sylar out again with a sliding divider.
Waking up in the apartment to find both of them gone and the map destroyed, Sylar is saved by the fragment of a 9th Wonders comic book, which gives the name of the artist Issac Mendez and his studio address. He finds Mendez (who paints the future) waiting for him, surrounded by paintings of his own demise--and kills him. Using his new ability Sylar paints himself stalking Ted Sprague, the radioactive man, and attempts to ask Mohinder for help. Hiro and Ando listen from behind a painting. Not finding any council there he instead calls his mother and visits her. The incident doesn't go as he might hope. She doesn't listen to his concerns, and when he tries to show her his abilities she reacts as though he's a demon, and tries to stab him with a pair of scissors. Sylar defends himself, and his mother dies. In the moment afterward Hiro appears, sword in hand, having stopped time to try to kill him. Sylar, holding the blade, tells him to do it, and as Hiro fails he shatters the blade with ice. Left alone, he paints the impending destruction of New York city in his mother's blood.
The next stage of his plan is to get Ted Sprague caught by the FBI (he's wanted for murder and for allegedly having possession of radioactive materials, but in fact Ted is radioactive.) This all goes to plan and Ted is captured and driven away, allowing Sylar to hijack the van and kill Ted without endangering himself, and take his power. Now using Isaac's loft as a base, Sylar paints himself fighting Peter at Kirby Plaza, and realises that he's meant to be stopping Peter from exploding - i.e. he's supposed to be the hero. He goes to confront him, and is instead beaten down by everyone else, and laughs as he realises in fact that he is the one who triggers Peter's explosion. Distracted by this realisation, he fails to respond to Hiro's appearance, and the sword being driven through him. He falls to the ground and seems to die.
Volume 2
Sylar awakes on a deck chair on a beach, but he's not really on a deck chair on a beach. Instead he's been kidnapped, stitched up and left in the care of the illusionist Candice, deep in the Mexican jungle. He asks her to show him what's real, and when she does Sylar bashes her over the back of the head with a mug and tries to take her power, finding it odd that he fails. Thus begins his quest to discover why his powers have disappeared--but first Sylar stumbles out of the jungle and passes out on a road, where a young brother and sister couple fleeing the authorities find him.
The driver of the car, Derek, discovers that the two are wanted for murder and plans to reveal them to the cops, but Sylar kills him before he can, and leaves with the twins himself--but only after tricking them into revealing how their combined powers work. They want to go to New York and speak to Chandra Suresh (whom Sylar knows is dead), and ask him to try and take her ability away, but as he believes Mohinder might know what's been done to him, it seems like a reasonable place to start. Also he wants Maya's to be the first ability he takes when he recovers his own powers. Her misery literally kills people.
He helps the two to cross the border, by using Maya's powers, and at great risk to his own life. However his using her doesn't settle well with her brother, who is protective and sees through his manipulation. When they're left alone, Sylar tells Alejandro in English that he intends to kill both of them, and that even if he can't have her power, he'll keep her. As Maya is the English speaker out of the pair of them, Alejandro doesn't understand.
Sylar teaches Maya to control her own ability - i.e. making Alejandro's countering ability redundant - then when Alejandro confronts Sylar about the murder of his mother, he makes it clear to Maya that it was an accident, much like her own, and that his mother had made no effort to understand him. Having bonded with her, Sylar sees no reason to keep Alejandro around, and dispatches him during their next fight, leaving him, after sharing a passionate kiss with Maya, to continue their trip to New York alone.
When they make it to Mohinder's apartment, Sylar finds Molly there alone, and holds her hostage. He calls Mohinder to let him know to come home, and introduces him to Maya when he does. Mohinder tries to tell Maya that Sylar is a killer, but she shakes off the accusation. It's only when Sylar, revealing Mohinder's research, demonstrates that Mohinder has the cure and insists to him at gunpoint that he's given it that Maya seems to realise that Sylar isn't the man she thought he was. She gets angry, and is prepared to kill them both, but when Molly emerges from the bedroom dying she pulls back from the edge, and Mohinder reluctantly agrees to Sylar's terms.
They go to Mohinder's lab, which is Isaac's old loft, where Mohinder explains his research. Sylar, busy with Mohinder, doesn't pay much attention to Molly explaining her power (the ability to find people with abilities) to Maya, and so when she realises her brother is dead ("he isn't anywhere") she freaks out again. Sylar shoots her dead in frustration. Mohinder at last believes that the cure will work on Sylar, but first Sylar insists that it's tested on Maya, whom it cures of her wounds and brings back to life, thanks to it being a mix of Mohinder's blood and the regenerative cheerleader Claire's. He's just about to take the injection himself when Elle arrives, and in her surprise to see him, Sylar is given the opportunity to escape. He takes the cure with him, and gets zapped in the back with electricity just as he jumps out the window and escapes. Out in an alleyway he injects himself with the cure, and his telekinesis begins to return to him.
Volume 3
Coming immediately after the events of Season 2, Volume 3 is the first part of the two volume Season 3. However since Sylar is coming from barely a handful of episodes into this season (although a lot happens in that time) this is where his history section will shortly end.
With his powers restored, Sylar heads for Costa Verde to confront Claire, and take her power. She's at home alone, and managed to strike him unconscious for a brief time with one of her cheerleading trophies, though Sylar is clearly enjoying the chase. He recovers quickly, closing all the exits and pulling all the blinds, throwing the house into darkness, then proceeds to capture Claire and take her ability. Because she can heal, his action doesn't kill her, and he leaves her alive. He does, however, dispatch two Company agents as he leaves, with no effort at all.
Now his need for revenge turns to the Company itself. Sylar breaks into Primatech paper and kills Robert 'Bob' Bishop, the head of the company, taking his ability of being able to turn any metal into gold. He then throws Elle through a viewing window. Noah shoots him, but Sylar heals, mocking him with the ability that he's stolen from Noah's daughter, all the while with Peter - trapped in the body of a sound-manipulating killer named Jesse imprisoned nearby - curses and yells for him to stop. Ignoring him, and having knocked Noah unconscious, Sylar turns back on Elle, intent on taking her ability, but as he begins to cut into her she lets out a massive burst of electricity, knocking Sylar out and releasing the other prisoners in the cells, all of them dangerous criminals.
When he stirs awake Sylar is on a table in one of the holding cells, under the effect of strong sedatives, and Angela Petrelli is with him. She tells him that he is her son (this is a lie, and at first Sylar believes it to be one), however his desire to be a part of a family, particularly a family in which he would be Peter's brother, is transparent, blinding him with the happy lie.
Angela, twisted individual that she is, brings Sylar a woman from whom to take an ability, this one Clairsentience, or the ability to read information from objects. Sylar is then made into Noah's new partner, though Noah loathes him and wants him dead, and the two go out on a mission together to recapture the escaped Level 5 specials. They're holding up a bank, which Noah enters without Sylar in an attempt to settle things himself. He ends up in trouble quickly, and though Peter (still trapped in Jesse's body) uses his ability of sound manipulation to knock everyone down, a moment later Peter is gone (it's complicated, but basically his future self came and took him away, leaving the bad guy in his place, right at the worst possible moment). In any case, Sylar rips through the convicts, accidentally allows Knox (fear eating) escape, kills Jesse and takes his power, and the only one of them that gets returned to Level 5 is the pyrokinetic Flint. Sylar returns to his cell.
Shortly after this Peter, freshly returned from a terrible future in which Nathan was the President of America, Sylar blew up Costa Verde and Claire is a vicious killer hell bent on killing her own uncle, where everyone in the world has abilities and it's on the brink of ripping the world in half, appears in his cell. He's been taught how to use Sylar's ability by his future self, but the result is that he feels the same impossible to deal with hunger that Sylar is barely learning to begin to cope with himself. They fight, and Peter breaks Sylar's neck, then turns to kill Angela who has just arrived. Sylar, recovering, saves Angela's life, and leaves Peter in her hands when she promises to look after him.
Meanwhile, Noah has arranged to take Sylar on another mission, this one to capture a man named Stephen Canfield who can create transdimensional vortexes. He sets it up deliberately to try and kill Sylar once and for all, but Claire is there when they arrive, trying to speak to Canfield herself. The desperate criminal creates a vortex in order to give himself time to escape, and Sylar saves Claire from falling into it. At the same time, his clairsentience gives him an idea of the pain and grief she's been suffering because of him. He tries to apologise, but she wants none of it, angry with her father for working with him while at the same time trying to keep her out of the loop. When Noah tries to trade Canfield's freedom for him opening a vortex under Sylar where he waits in the car, Canfield instead creates a vortex and steps into it, disappearing himself from existence. Once again, Sylar returns to his cell.
After being visited by Daphne, who's collecting people for Pinehearst (secretly run by a not-dead Arthur Petrelli), Sylar turns to Peter for help. 'Their' mother has been put into a psychic coma, and he needs Peter's help to read her mind and find out who was behind the attack. Peter sees the Pinehearst symbol, and after drawing it, Sylar produces the card Daphne gave him, complete with said symbol. They prepare to leave, but Sylar suggests Peter stay behind and let him check out Pinehearst by himself. Instead of succumbing, Peter and Sylar fight, again with Peter taking the upper hand. He declares that he's 'the most special', and after carefully drugging Sylar and laying him out in the safety of his cell, he heads to Pinehearst himself.
Reincarnated History: The De Angelis family was an institution. They had existed in this city since its conception, one of the first Italian families to settle in the area now known as Little Italy. Nero, father to three brothers and a sister, was the direct descendent of those first Italian settlers, and being the eldest he inherited the largest house, the biggest bank account, and more importantly the position as head not only of his own brood but of the entire De Angelis empire. Perhaps they weren’t the most influential family in Locke City, but they were large enough to be a threat, and so they kept to their own turf, small business - money laundering, illegal gambling, gun running, trading locally in black market goods, but absolutely no drugs. That business belonged elsewhere, and getting between others and their money was a good way to start a war.
The family, vastly spread in every direction, are strongly Catholic, and go to church every Sunday. Besides Dante’s father and his three brothers, there are cousins and second cousins and so on, most of them still living in Little Italy like their forebears, although some have moved out of Locke City altogether.
As a young man Nero was the reckless sort, leading his brothers into all kind of nonsense in his efforts to prove himself to his father. Marrying tempered his recklessness, and it wasn’t until he hit forty that Nero had a crisis of the middle aged variety. He took his brothers on one last ‘glory days’ job, robbing a bank not because he needed the money but because of the thrill of it, and almost ended up throwing his life away. He was locked away for three years for aggravated assault, a massive cut-down from the original sentence, played by the talented lawyers he surrounded himself with. Dante was ten at the time. To him, his father’s arrest made more sense than it did for his younger brother, and he was old enough to resent the role of the arresting policemen, and envy the slick mob lawyers that visited their home throughout the affair. During the time of their father's imprisonment and after their sister's first miscarriage, their mother began to drink.
By the time Nero came out of jail, Dante was a teenager. His elder brother, Leo, was just beginning his career in law, and he knew he didn’t want to be like him. Nor did he have any intention of becoming like their father, a man whose respect existed only because of his name, and not because of his position in society. Not old enough to have had his fate predecided for him, nor young enough to be dismissed entirely, Dante expressed his intention to go into the medical career path, and so when he left highschool that was exactly what he did.
Highschool had been easy enough for the young man, albeit difficult to deal with while growing in their elder brother's shadow. Leo had been a bully; quarterback, prom King. If there was a title or medal to win, Leonardo De Angelis had it. He did his best to do nothing that his brother had done before him. Dante learned to play the oboe and the clarinet, excelled in science and literature, and won a number of prizes himself. A quiet and focused student, but charismatic with his teachers, it was a breeze for him to move to a college of his choice; or in Dante's case, a medical school.
It took eight and a half years of his life, but Dante qualified as a doctor specialising in psychiatry. Gabriel took to the medical career like a fish to water, finding he had considerable aptitude for it, and a steady hand with a knife. Though he was urged toward microsurgery or something similar, he instead chose to pursue psychiatry, believing that it would offer him more flexibility and independence. While in medical school and during his time interning at various hospitals and clinics, Gabriel followed the family tradition of networking, getting to know as wide a variety of people as possible. Character witnesses, you see.
It was quite an investment, and one that his parents immediately began to take advantage of. No sooner had the paperwork gone through on Gabriel's new property ( an LLC in a handsome three-story Beaux-Arts style house, with patient and doctor access to the courtyard garden behind it ) did they begin to take advantage of their son's new credibility--and his RX scripts. At the time of his first Echo, Dante has been practicing psychiatry for less than a year. He has to learn how to manage his new practice, the therapists and nurses under his employ, his parents increased pressure to risk his respectability for the Family, as well as his own road of self discovery and the danger that being one of the enlightened will bring not only to him, but to everything he thinks he knows.
As if that wasn't enough, his father has recently been arrested in a high profile drug scandal - ridiculous, since nobody in their family deals with drugs, and this is cocaine, not prescription medication. But a recent argument with Lucca - the one that triggered his brother's first Echo - might give him more answers in respect to that. A stolen RX pad is just the start of his troubles with his littlest brother.
First Echo: I'd like for Dante to have been attacked by snakes on the subway on his way home; his defense throwing up his hand as though to push them away, would be ineffective, and at the time seem stupid, but he would later recall the strong feeling that it should be able to do something, as though if he tried hard enough he could push them away, move objects, and perhaps even more. He won't actually recover his telekinesis with this Echo, just the strong belief in his having the ability, and no knowledge of why.
Preincarnation Personality:
Driven by order, when Sylar discovers that something is broken there is a necessity to fix it; in this way he's somewhat obsessive compulsive, though it also relates to his ability. He instantly fixes Suresh's watch, and insists on repairing the broken clock that belonged to his adopted father, even though it obviously displeases his mother. In later seasons he's shown having trouble controlling this compulsive behaviour, but doing so regardless for the sake of his son. This also reflects on the hunger he has for abilities, and seeing, wanting, but not being able to do anything about it is stressful to him. His ability, his desire to see how it works is at its basis primitive, and drives him to extraordinary limits. As a result, taking an ability is like getting his fix, it doesn't matter what the ability is, and using it is exciting for him. It also explains why he favours his first ability, telekinesis, and because of its flexibility it can be used to great effect, in ways that other people's whole powers are necessary for; i.e. in a later season: he can use telekinesis to force people's actions much like the Puppet Master, and consequently doesn't bother to steal this power.
As Sylar, Gabriel does not take powers because they are useful, or dangerous, he takes them because his hunger forces him to, and as a result it is not exactly pick and mix for him. His victims have been all shapes and sizes, and they could have had the power to clap on and off lights for all Sylar cared. The point, after all, is seeing how it works.
Gabriel is an excellent actor, mostly due to the fact that he is a talented, fluid liar, but also because he is a mimic in all ways; not simply with his powers. After taking Zane's powers, he employs an element of Zane's humanity in his interactions with Mohinder, for example, wringing his hands together and appearing anxious, in a perfect mimic of how Zane introduced himself to Gabriel in the first place. He steals names from the things he hears or sees without hesitation; for instance he takes the name 'Sylar' from his watch, and the name 'Drew O'Grady' from a combination of news headlines: 'The President drew fire' and 'O'Grady farm to be purchased back'. In later seasons he plays an FBI agent to the cops with fluid ease, and has even mimicked Matt Parkman enough to pass with his wife, bevermind successfully being Nathan Petrelli for months.
However, his intentions are not always well masked, and they slip through the cracks no matter how good his play acting is, because his personality is inherently an addictive one, and in some ways he feels a need to be recognised, and in others his hunger is something that he cannot mask completely because it is so much a part of him. This is usually most true of his potential victims, or people who are routinely suspicious--say because their husbands are secretly working for the Company. He is intimidating regardless of his attempts to appear otherwise--fine when you're playing a politician, but to a certain degree difficult to deal with post season 4, where Sylar gives off a distinct vibe of intimidating even when he's no longer a killer.
In general there seems to be very little effect on Gabriel as a result of absorbing other people's powers. Bennet and the company suggest that Gabriel would become more and more mentally unstable as he absorbs different facets of people's personalities along with their powers, but in fact this only becomes a problem when he absorbs his shapeshifting ability. It is common speculation that when Gabriel loses control of his powers when demonstrating them to his mother it's due to this erosion of his identity, but he claims when arguing with her (after shapeshifting into her) that he wanted to kill her, seeing as she'd called him a monster. He shows no other signs of his sense of self eroding, only a distinct evolution of perspective based on events and his own failures and successes.
Consistently, Sylar did not continue to maintain a charade once his true motives, character, or abilities were recognised, and was quick to note any changes in behaviour that suggested that his act has been seen through. This failed him with Mohinder, who poisoned him before his behaviour fluctuated, but not so in the case of Sandra Bennet, whom he catches the moment she realises something is wrong. Again this intuition bears true throughout the series, because it's just so easy for him to read other people. Still, there is limited pride in successfully appearing to be someone else; Gabriel is proud of being himself, and seems almost relieved to let himself loose again--for instance in a later season, after spending too long as a government agent, and later as Nathan. He writes his name in blood to make his point, after losing sight of himself after taking on his shapeshifting ability.
Sylar finds a vicarious pleasure in messing with the heads of his victims, even to the point of allowing them to believe that he's helpless, or that they're winning. In Mohinder's case he plays possum all the way up to the point where he is shot at, then reveals that he manipulated the switch on the catheta with his telekinesis in order to prevent the drugs being fed into his system. He plays dead in order to escape the Company, too, and playing clueless to other people's plans is something he clearly enjoys. He revels in the feeling of malevolent power that comes with knowing that he can step in at any time, but is despite that allowing someone else to feel like they're in control--simply because it makes it that much more of a blow to them when he reveals otherwise. As a matter of course such delays also allow him to learn more about people's plans or motives; they are inevitably more talkative when they think they're in control of a situation.
Gabriel has been shown to hesitate when it comes to killing children, or to be extra protective to them, however short of killing the cheerleader, he hasn't been in any position to kill a child since Molly, who hid from him when he killed her parents. In the future he knowingly spares a child, Luke: "And I let you live, which is kind of a big deal for me!" (though it's heavily implied that Luke is his brother) and as stated before he is protective of his son. He also spares Noah, making it clear that it isn't just children related to him that he's willing to give a free pass.
Gabriel is extremely contrary. This is again due to his control issues; he doesn't want to be manipulated by anyone, because now that he's tasted freedom and the ability to control his own life, he wants to keep it that way. This causes tension with Angela Petrelli in a later season, and also with the Company. Tell him to do something one way, and he will refuse and do it another, just to be difficult. This holds true. In Brave New World (S4), rather than kill Doyle, he simply strings him up like a Christmas Tree. Simply put, Sylar has a twisted and remarkable sense of humour, and employs it to devastating effect in many ways. He mocks his victims openly, and employs that dark humour ruthlessly, often callously. In Isaac's case, he mocked him for not being big enough for his power, making it clear that he had no empathy with his victims--ironic, since his power is later revealed to be empathetic at its basic level, and something that is the basis of his later regrets.
As he was developing into a serial killer, his moments of emotional backlash grew less common. He originally didn't do much planning, and was oppurtunistic and particularly flamboyant in his practice, but with his confidence came more order, and better applications of his powers. Rather than lose his temper in New York when his chance to take Ted's ability seemed impossible, he quite calmly phones in a tip to the police that ends up with Ted being caught and driven out of the city, so that he can follow them and take Ted's power at his leisure, and without Peter or Noah there to intervene. His instant use of Zane Taylor's name when Mohinder appears on his doorstep is also clever and immediate, just as when asked for a saliva sample he goes back to the other room to take one from the dead man in the kitchen. He is actually brilliant and scheming when it's necessary, with a sharp mind, sharp intelligence and sharper wit. The more confident he became, the less emotional he was.
Gabriel initially did not think that he would kill without purpose (i.e. people without powers), but it was a line that slowly faded further away as time goes on. He kills Chandra Suresh, who has no power, and in later seasons despite learning a way to take his powers without killing, he still kills for the sake of it--not because he has to to take the power, but because his hunger demands it. At first he shows genuine regret, though short lived, and this is echoed once more when he learns that he, rather than Ted, is meant to be the exploding man (in fact, Peter is the one who explodes) and may be responsible for the deaths of all the people in New York City. At this point he sought redemption from his mother:
"Mom — Mom, don't. Don't, it's just... maybe I don't have to be special. That's okay to just be a normal watchmaker. Can't you just tell me that's enough?"
At this point he wanted her to agree; to say that perhaps he doesn't have to be special because he's always been special to her just how he is, or something like that. She doesn't, insisting that he can be great; that maybe he could even be President one day (foreshadowing a possible future). He didn't want to be responsible for those deaths--but upon killing her and painting the exploding city in her blood on the floor, it became clear to him that the future was unavoidable, and he went out to face it, or maybe even to make one last determined effort to prevent it.
Any differences: A great number of things differentiate Dante De Angelis from Gabriel Gray; but they come down to two major categories of changes: Family, and Powers.
What catalysts transformed the earnest, quiet and brilliant Gabriel into the monster he was to become were a combination of his mother's determination that he could do anything, and her horror when confronted with those abilities--and the hunger that came with Gabriel's intuitive aptitude, a poison of corruption that drove him to want to know more, to understand more; ergo to kill more.
At 27 - and younger than Gabriel was when his ability began to manifest - Dante already has power; power that he's earned both by his name and his profession. He's given respect, looked up to as a decent member of society in the daylight and a powerful heir to the De Angelis line otherwise. There is no need for him to prove himself, and while he shares the belief that he can do anything, Dante has never required other people to tell him so.
He was neither an orphan, nor the son of a watchmaker, and is stable and confident before his powers begin to manifest, rather than needing them in order to find some higher purpose.
While he can be forthright, Dante is a brilliant liar and psychologically manipulative. He has the same dark twisted streak as Sylar, but unlike him has no desire for eventual redemption from his crimes, after all he was born to a certain kind of mob royalty, and believes that his name is the only permission he needs to do whatever he pleases. There is a clinical superiority to him in his approach to medicine--he is far from empathic with his patients, although he does retain enough charisma to fake a decent bedside manner.
Unlike Sylar he has iron family ties, is strongly religious, and does not aspire beyond what he's already achieved. A comfortable, rich lifestyle, several expensive cars and a cookie cutter family of his own--nothing less will do for a De Angelis.
While Sylar is a lone wolf, Dante is a member of a pack, and a leader in his own right (he owns his own, albeit-paid-for-by-mommy-and-daddy) medical practice, and has two therapists and two mental health nurses employed under the Angel of Mercy Medical umbrella. He surrounds himself with people whom he can manipulate to one task or another, and can therefore call on for favors (or alibis) at will.
Also, Dante is fiercely loyal to his mother and father. He may not have much love for them when all's said and done, but loyalty, respect and honor, as well as family tradition and duty, are all well impressed upon him. He's Italian, it's in his blood. Any slight against them will be dealt with swiftly and sharply, because in his life to insult one's parents is worse than insulting the person themselves.
Abilities: 'Briefly', his powers are as follows:
Intuitive aptitude - Sylar's original power is to by intuition and examination completely understand how something works, and to intuitively learn how to use it or fix it. He has a compulsion to use this power which presents itself as an intense hunger, and uses it to take the powers of others by directly examining their brains.
This power is limited by his human memory, and whichever weaknesses come with the powers he takes, though it's demonstrable that he is usually better at using whichever power he takes than the original person to have that power. Sylar can tell if a clock is broken from across a room, and likewise can see what a person's power is and how it works by observation alone. He can tell when people are 'broken', i.e. if they have a blood clot in their brain.
Telekinesis - Gabriel can narrow his power down to creating incisions through bone, literally rending the flesh and bone apart with force, use it to augment his own strength, to throw objects or people from or across a great distance. He has flipped huge trucks with this power, shielded himself from bullets, and can manipulate people (or himself) physically, raise them (or himself) off the ground, or strangle or kill them without touching. In general, Sylar needs to use gestures to manipulate this power, which reduces it in a fight to things he can do with just two hands. It also has a power limit. The truck was probably at the top of his power level, and it needed both hands and a lot of concentration. The effort that Peter uses on breaking open a vault door using the same power causes him to have a nose bleed and seem weakened by the effort.
Precognition - While looking at blank canvas, Sylar can project from his mind an image onto the paper, and then paint what he sees. It doesn't have to be paint; at one point Sylar paints an image in his own mother's blood. The future can be changed, and therefore isn't a certainty, suggesting that what is painted is only a possible future. Also it can be used to paint people in the present, or even in the distant past.
I've only ever used this power in games occasionally, to 'predict' plots that are deliberately sent my way. It can be a fun power to play with, event wise.
Induced radioactivity - This is the power I'm most worried about, and the most willing to work with the mods on. It includes: the ability to produce radiation on a broad spectrum, i.e. everything from heating up cold coffee, to creating a burst of electro magnetic energy to take out a building's electricity, to creating an outright nuclear explosion. It comes hand in hand with radioactive immunity.
This power needs some limiting, as in its canon form the power is sufficient to destroy the center of New York city. I'd like him to still be able to use it to explode or slow burn within a small area. Say, the area of a small warehouse, with it being limited in its reusability--i.e. he would tire very quickly through its use - to the point of fainting if it was used to these proposed limits. The most limiting part of this power, in my opinion, is Sylar's canonical lack of desire to explode in the first place, but mod permission would be sought before using it with any effect, assuming the possibility ever came up.
Shattering - Essentially the ability to shatter objects from a distance. Trevor is shown to shatter glass in demonstration, and Gabriel never seems to use this power with his victims, so it's not shown what the limit of this power is. For the sake of consistency, Gabriel will be able to shatter objects that are naturally fragile - glass, chocolate eggs, sheet ice etc, though his telekinesis would actually be capable of much the same thing at this point, rendering the shattering moot.
Freezing - After he stole this ability Gabriel froze its user, demonstrating that he can freeze an entire person within seconds. He does not have to be touching someone to do this. He can also freeze his environment, again without touching, and cover significant expanses with ice. He can freeze metal to the point of shattering. Further, this ability comes alongside some natural immunity to the cold. It's rarely if ever used. Sylar turns water into snow at one point.
Melting - This ability is a change of state ability. With direct application the state of an object can be changed from solid to liquid without seemingly affecting its temperature in any way. For the sake of consistency, and because it's not made clear, these objects are not melted by heat and therefore do not become solid when they return to room temperature, but consistently remain liquid.
Enhanced hearing - What it says on the tin. The user can hear another person's heartbeat, hear cockroaches scuttling about, or can hear a pin drop from miles away. The original user listens to loud music in order to prevent the headaches associated with the power. Sylar at first shows similar weakness, however since then he seems to have developed his use of the ability, able to listen to conversations across a crowded plaza in New York, or hear and recognise someone's heartbeat.
Rapid cell regeneration - Sylar can heal from small injuries, or, like the girl he's taken this ability from, regrow body parts. As suggested, I'm happy to slow down the body part regeneration to a few days if necessary and keep the rapid healing as per canon. As in canon at this point, embedding something into the back of his brain will temporarily kill him--temporary only in that it needs to be removed for him to revive. Beheading him or blowing his head off will kill him permanently, and it's also implied that if his healing power is turned off, via a power null or by embedding something in his brain, he can also be killed permanently by burning.
Otherwise, so long as there is nothing preventing his body from returning to its original state, he should 'revive' from a state of apparent death irregardless of whether he's jumped from a building, been hit by a train, or shot repeatedly in the chest. He can naturally expel bullets, but not knives, which would need to be removed by hand. Dislocated shoulders or broken ribs, flayed skin, it all needs to be encouraged back into position or removed in order for the healing to occur.
It's probably reasonable to assume that throwing him out an airlock or into a sun, or otherwise destroying his body faster than he can heal, will kill him with just as much certainty. He could, however, survive being the source of a nuclear disaster. Go figure.
Further, this power causes the blood of the user to be able to used to regenerate the cells of others, passing on the healing power temporarily to someone else. It could potentially kill anyone with cancer, speeding the process along. Obviously it can't heal someone whose head has been blown off.
Alchemy - Sylar has the ability to turn any object - no matter what it's made of - into gold. It's literally a Midas touch, applying to people as much as objects, but comes without the sideeffect of not being able to control it. It doesn't have a canon limit, but it should only apply to a small area.
I feel like I should point out that Sylar isn't uncounterable - the creators made a point of that, since they needed ways to work around his abilities and have the heroes win - but he is a power house in many ways. He is susceptible to telepathy, can lose his memory, be neutralised completely by power nulls, and on top of that suffers human weaknesses too; he can be knocked unconscious or killed, though the killing is a little more technical than pointing and clicking.
Sylar can and does kill people with his powers - he was a serial killer, that's sort of his thing - and as such I have always employed rigorous permissions when it comes to using their extremes, which are rarely used even in the series. Sylar demonstrates in How to Stop an Exploding Man, and later when he meets his father, that he has little interest in killing things that are of no threat, nor have anything to offer him, and much more importantly, IC consequences are always an option if this route is pursued.
The way these powers are recovered and the effect his personality, between incarnations, has on him, will effect the way he ends up using them, as elaborated in the changes to his personality highlighted above.
Roleplay Sample - Third Person: Claire Bennet's heart beat pounded at a million miles an hour. Following her around the house, watching her run at the slightest provocation, trying to find the will to fight back--there was something wonderful about it. How long had it been since he'd really allowed himself to enjoy the thrill of the chase? How long since the last time his victim's heart had thundered it's last desperate pounding life in one last ditch effort to stay that way?
Fear of death was a powerful motivator, but no more powerful than Sylar's hunger. This power that he'd failed to collect it the first time, now represented something so much bigger. It was a loose thread, a necessity, a challenge, and he couldn't allow someone who'd slipped through his fingers to carry on unmolested, especially when the power that Claire had was such a useful one.
With this power, he could live forever.
Sylar backed away from the door where Claire had hidden herself. The thrill of the chase wasn't helped by just throwing the doors open and charging inside, even though he could have done it easily. The prey had to believe it had a chance of escaping, even though Sylar had locked the entire house down. Nothing was going in or out unless he wanted it to.
He sank back into the darkness he'd created with blinds and broken lightbulbs, waiting for Claire to emerge at the thought that Sylar had gone. She came at last, tried the door, head straight for the kitchen, and when Sylar caught up with her she drove a knife through his chest.
Well that just settled it, didn't it? There was no way he could possibly leave without her power now.
Winded, bleeding, his hand to his chest, Sylar pulled himself forward, following after her as she made a last ditch effort to escape. Her hope had transformed once more into fear, the adrenaline only accentuated her ability to him. Like a snake feeling vibrations, Sylar could practically feel her ability now. It tasted copper on the tip of his tongue. This was the moment.
Excitement snarled up in him, and he threw his hand up, caught her in a telekinetic grip, and raised his other hand up to cut her open. Everything now was simple instinct, guided by the art of his doing it a dozen times before. She had something he wanted - and now needed - and he wasn't prepared to leave without it.
Roleplay Sample - Network:
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Such an elegant method of communication, and what an interesting situation I seem to have found myself in, after all. This network connects me with so many fascinating individuals; I simply can't wait to meet all of you.
My name is Doctor Dante De Angelis. I'm sure the name is familiar to some of you. That's Dante of the Locke City De Angelis. I own the Angel of Mercy medical practice in Little Italy, and am a qualified psychiatrist.
Although far be it for me to peddle my wares to such a captive audience, I suppose I would be regress in not doing so. If anyone happens to be crucially in need of medical attention, and doesn't have time for the no doubt uncomfortable questions Locke City Hospital will ask--well...if you must ask for unsolicited medical advice, then I suppose the least I can do is offer my services. For a fee, of course.
no subject
Date: 2014-02-22 02:17 am (UTC)A quiet child, his mother's most adored and only son, Gabriel became more and more like the clockmaker that raised him, a personality that he would later have to put on like a mask to see her again. This included a gentleness, patience, soft unagressive speech and posture, and long suffering nature, because it was the only way to prevent her outbursts. Gabriel became unwilling to correct her or speak his mind, finding it easier to go along with whatever she wanted, if only because the effect of not doing so would cause conflict between them. His mother's contempt for his father (clockmakers period) and repeated desire that he could be more, made him yearn to be more than he was, to be as special as he had been told all his life that he was, without ever truly reaching that point. Nearing thirty he began to resent it, and tried to ask her if it would be okay if he wasn't special; after all the only thing he wanted most was to please his mother, and he had come to believe that he would never be good enough for her.
Conversely to this upbringing of poverty, of son and mother locked in an unhealthy relationship, Dante did not grow up wanting for anything. His brother and elder sister were of a previous generation, and he had little interest in them, nor - because he was the third child and second son -did any of the unhealthy responsibility burdened on his elder siblings fall on him. He was expected only to make the best of himself, and not end up an embarassment to the family, and he was free to grow and do childish things, unlike Gabriel. Dante wasn't afraid to speak his mind, nor do as he pleased when he pleased it, but he was none the less a focused and bookish child, with strong ambitions, and from a young age a desire to carve out a niche for himself in the world. Power and money, his father taught him, made the world go round.
No wanderlust was engendered in him, nor patience, nor was there a desire to reject the religion that had formerly expressed itself in Virginia Gray's madness. Instead religion was a strong hand and guide to Dante's life. He attended a church based nursery, then a Roman Catholic school, sang in the choir, and wore his Sunday finery each week to mass. As an adult, Dante finds strength in his faith; he says mass at dinner, confesses his (many) sins, still sings in church. Vocal about his beliefs, mysterious happenings in Locke City will unsettle him in particular, and a crisis of faith is perhaps inevitable.
His confidence reaches only as far as his understanding of the world does--it stops at aliens and superpowers, and what he will become will horrify him. Dante is dismissive of other mythologies and religions, intolerant even, for a psychiatrist. This is expressly opposite to Sylar, who marveled at the first ability he saw, and is still thrilled by the supernatural long after the initial shine would have worn off for someone else. This also is the route of Sylar's desire to show off, while Dante's mob origins make him more cautious, and much more liable to keep his hand close to his chest.
Additionally, although his parents were much older than he and his brother, Dante has learned to have a strong faith in the family unit. Unlike Sylar who openly rejects the idea of having a real life after his pipe dream of belonging to another family evaporates before his eyes, Dante is raised in a strong unit where there is a mother and a father and children, a support structure in place, college funds set aside. He has never had to worry about a single thing in his life, and family events are never short of lively, and richly celebrated. And as for any problems that arise: money is the answer--everyone always has a price. These tenets might protect him in his strictly ordered professional world, but they make him ill equipped against unnatural and unpredictable forces. Not that Dante takes powerlessness lying down. He's been taught to take advantage of any given situation, to squeeze as much as he can get out of it--and to walk away from those that offer him no forseeable profit. He can be cold and calculating, but he's an expert in people's behavior by profession, and capable of putting on his own masks over the calculation in order to get the most out of them.
Gabriel grew up without tradition. For Dante, it's been ingrained in his lifestyle, and like his faith is a strong motivator. The heirarchy of the mob family, with his father at the top of it, the blood oaths sworn with their accompanying responsibilities and promises; keeping family secrets, never infighting, the obligation of vendetta; these are all things that structure his life and his beliefs. Dante is secretive, steadfast, fiercely loyal and honorable. He has a place in the world he was born into, and so long as he follows the code, the support and protection of the greater family that surrounds them - not just relatives.
But their situation also means risk, a certain amount of overcautiousness, an edge of deserved paranoia. These things mean survival in a world where anyone who's too friendly might just be a cop in disguise. So in some ways Dante is a contradiction: confident but cautious. While Sylar shares a criminal lifestyle, however, he has none of Dante's support structure; he has to depend on himself. Sylar is bold and brash about his methods, uncaring that they demonstrate his powers blatantly; he has no fear of the police, or the FBI. Dante on the other hand has to be sly and subvertive; one false step, one hair out of place could end him, and if not now then when he finds himself promoted higher up the food chain, and subjected to greater law enforcement scrutiny. Every move must be methodical, executed to a plan, unlike the general chaos and enjoyment of the hunt that is demonstrated by Sylar. This methodology and clipped professionalism is blatant in Dante's persona. He is above all efficient, and he shows it in everything about him, his choice of words, his manner of dress, even the meticulous way he organises his life right down to the last detail. Again, see the way he approaches medicine: mediculous and clinical. And he gets rattled and consequently short tempered when his plans get upset. If there is a flaw in him it's his rigidity; he is slow to adapt, and easy to frustrate.
Even so, there must be outlets for what, in Dante, is his own dark cruelty. Sylar finds redemption, even yearns for it, but as I mentioned before Dante has no interest in it at all. He is very happy with who and what he is. Dante is the child who caught his own frogs from the river in order to eviscerate them; the slightly older child who put rats in cages without food and measured how long it took for them to eat each other; the teenager who quietly manipulated one of his classmates to stab another, experimented with just how many times one girl would go back to an abusive lover, and tested just how many days it would take a belleageured history professor to go from losing his temper to attacking a student--and that was just over the course of his freshman year at highschool, all while achieving stellar grades. As an adult, he's done far worse, postioned above the footmen in the family heirarchy and effetively given his own strings to manipulate. This sinister side of Dante will invariably see opportunity, too, in his new allies as well as his new enemies. He may be one of them, but they offer the chance to express these dark urges, and quite possibly without retribution. There may be a flicker of them visible but they won't express themselves in the open easily; he's much too careful, too practiced at passing as harmless and congenial, for that to happen. He will, however, use every trick in his arsenal to psychoanalyze the people around him, to try and figure out what they're about before even they know. Somewhere he'll be keeping a little black book of relevant notes about the other reincarnated that he meets. He is infinitely curious, particularly about what makes people tick, and the echoes will fascinate him--perhaps to the point where he attempts to trigger them in other people himself.
As mentioned previously, powers don't make Dante powerful. For Sylar, they were the answer to his pressing question: will I ever be special. And sure enough, it turned out that he was incredibly special, capable of absorbing the powers of others and becoming whoever he designed himself to be. This made him cocky, self assured, and also incredibly dangerous, because - buoyed by miraculous and numerous abilities - nothing in the world could hold him back. I've already explained that Dante's power resides elsewhere; it's a more quiet and ordered thing, it's loaded in every word, and hidden behind the artistic personality he masks his darker urges with, and it's in the strength and vitality of the criminal family and name to which he belongs: De Angeli. He is boastful, yes, and proud, protected by that name, but he's also not an idiot, and he never takes risks with his name attached. To bring shame to his family would be the greatest humiliation of all.
In five words that each apply uniquely to each phase of his character, not to the others:
Gabriel - Devoted, Kind, Wanderlust, Watchmaker, Dissatisfied
Sylar - Matricide, Hunger, Unchecked, Special, Redeemable
Dante - Calculating, Tradition, Manipulation, Secretive, Methodical