A/N: This chapter is a little shorter than usual (500 words fewer than the average, actually) but a month accidentally went by without updating and I feel terrible about that! I don't know what else to say except: Life. Yeah. But hey, sickness has kind of left me stir crazy so writing this has become a real kind of therapy! Expect another update soon but I won't give anything definite because that seems to be when I break my promises -_-

Enjoy!

"I'm not going to defend myself to you," Sylar said as he proceeded to do just that.

Luke's holographic nostrils flared and he yanked the cat bot out of Sylar's grasp. "Listen to me," he pleaded. He should have known it would be a lost cause since his boss was always the one to lead, friends first or not.

Sylar took the bot back with a murderous glare. The thing seemed confused for a moment, but reveled in the attention regardless, curling into the human elbow. "What? I'm busy."

"With the bots?" His minion raised an eyebrow.

"Yes! there's a malfunction in their software to fix." He strode off.

Luke followed hastily. "Sir, we should be celebrating! We can do anything we want with the city now! What about raiding city hall?! Shooting cops!"

Sylar's eyes narrowed in exasperation. "The last one was always your idea."

"Okay so maybe I went a little overboard on the secret wish; it doesn't matter—"

"Minion." Sylar stopped in front of him with a warning gaze now. "We'll ransack the city tomorrow."

Instead of persisting after the lack of excuse or demanding to know what his boss would be doing in the meantime, Luke took the answer with giddy excitement and eagerness. His thoughts were already far-gone down that rabbit hole. "Awesome! Do you want me to draw up some plans? I'll get the plans! Oh there will be destruction and mayhem and maybe that radioactive melting gun we've been testing—"

Sylar listened to his minion's voice fade off before the likely unintentional slamming of a door. Luke always became too enthused for his own good, especially when it came to their next big productions. Sylar was usually one to support and encourage that as he focused on his wishes of domination. But right now, he found happiness hard to conjure up.

He was Sylar, though — the great villain of Mercy City. This was just the phase of mourning for the battles he could no longer partake in. All would be normal — no, it would be better than normal — in no time.

Eric pressed half of his face to the glass. She pretended not to notice the smearing he was causing. "What are you looking for again?"

"A dome. Roof. A dome roof. It has to be around here somewhere!" Her fingers tightened around the steering wheel. "He's not that clever. And when we find it, we'll nail him to the—"

"You know, blondie—" He turned his head as he talked and caught her eye twitch at the nickname. "—I mean, Claire; we've been driving around for half an hour and the shipping district isn't that big. We would both remember a… dome roof."

"So it's new." Claire rolled to a stop at another intersection, hunching down in the seat a little to look out the front windshield farther. All of the buildings looked the same. They were shades of the gray spectrum and long, with metal roofs. The parking lots were at most a quarter filled up, semis coming and going on the roads a few at a time.

Nothing exactly screamed 'criminal mastermind's lair'.

The blonde sat back and tried to think of what else she had been privy to seeing. Everything pointed to it being the observatory. The city observatory that Sylar had blown up with Mercy Man in it.

"Claire?"

She sighed. "Let's just… drive through one more time? Okay?"

Eric's expression remained the same for a moment before he nodded. "Sure. While you're driving, we can talk about how to kill Sylar. I always—"

"Wait, who said anything about killing?" She asked, distracted for a second while turning left. Claire saw Eric adopted a 'deer caught in the headlights of a car' look when she glanced sideways at him.

"Well— I— Why wouldn't we? He killed Mercy Man! If we lock him up again, what's the point?"

Claire gnawed her bottom lip between her teeth, contemplating that. She was not one to advocated for death… but her cameraman-slash-work-partner did have a point. If they locked him up, they would just have to group up together again in a couple months or so to catch him again.

She knew Noah Bennet and the rest at the prison pretty well — especially after all of these kidnapping shenanigans and therefore the political celebrations her father liked to throw afterwards when Sylar was caught. But even they and all the latest technology in the prison couldn't keep Sylar in.

That was just the way it was. And accepting it was probably some form of a cop-out, but Claire was done fighting that.

She licked her lips. "What were you saying?"

"About killing?" Eric shifted in the passenger seat, eyes lighting up with excitement. "Oh. Well I always thought it would be fun to string him up like a puppet…."

Sylar was absolutely, 100% not a stalker. Okay? Alright.

That said, he may have a tendency of following people. It made for good intel for evil plans, he always reasoned. Plus having blackmail for 'just in case' scenarios was always a smart plan. That philosophy had come in handy more than a few times when he and Minion had to get the timing of certain presentations perfected.

He checked out the console again, making sure that the GPS option was disengaged. He had it installed for when Minion was out and about. An easy was to check-in. But he knew that Minion liked to abuse it when keeping an eye on him, too, and Sylar was not about to take the chance of Minion chastising him over this too.

Claire Petrelli and the idiot she always had at her side — Erin, Evan, Eli, something along that vein — were currently sitting outside a 24/7 burger shack Sylar liked the frequent. It was close to their evil lair and they included the right amount of grease without having it drip all over you when you bit down, which was annoyingly common for most restaurants. And they didn't rat him out to cops if he passed them a 100$ bill every time he walked in.

That was always nice for both parties involved.

Wait. Would that mean they would answer the reporter's questions though? That could be an issue.

Sylar leaned on the door jam, peering through the window as the workers inside continued to go about their business. They didn't even cast the two customers another eye, which was just bad service in his mind. But then, it was a fast food place. They were just always so servant-like with him….

Did that mean they were sucking up to him? Now Sylar was disappointed at that thought.

Well, he was until Claire stood up to throw away their trash and once that idiot wasn't in the same eye-line as her, the evil mastermind found it hard to focus on anything but her. She had nice hair, he'd always thought. It was golden and in moments like this — with the wind whipping it around — it sort of formed a halo around her.

The irony in that, really. Oh Claire Petrelli was the golden child when seen by most but he knew what she was. She was a rebel. She chose reporting instead of something prestigious, she went to a community college on her own way, she was hardly ever at the political events Sylar crashed unless she was investigating them.

The woman even badmouthed her father and grandmother to him a few times, when she had been feeling particularly venomous over broken family promises he had no understanding of.

In a way, they were on the same side.

And he kind of wanted to show her that.

"Which is ridiculous," Sylar muttered to himself.

He watched them until they left the fast food joint, headed out of the warehouse district, and instead of following he went back to his evil lair. Like he said, he was not a stalker. He simply followed certain people when they came within his realm of monitoring.

A totally normal, 100% legal thing.

The cat bot in the passenger seat fixed him with a withering glare after a particularly metallic meow. It sounded almost foreboding. "What?" He demanded. It only looked at him, as if reading his thoughts and not approving. "Yes, well, no one asked you." Sylar grimaced to himself as he drove. "I don't know why I ever programmed you bots with emotional components."

It meowed again. He ignored it this time.