OOC: Application
Series: Heroes
Series' Medium: American network TV series (A series of graphic novels also contributes to the canon.)
Name: Sylar / Gabriel Gray
Role in canon: Main villain of season one, side villain of season two.
Age: 31
Gender: male
"Real Name": Zachary Blaine
Too detailed personal history:
(Apologies in advance for this history being about 1500 words over the limit. ._. Asked for permission on the length.)
Gabriel Gray grew up the only child of a watchmaker and his wife in Queens, New York. He was, in all ways, completely average; he neither excelled nor failed at anything in school, was never a part of a social circle but was never particularly picked on either, and the only remarkable thing about him was his instinctual knack for knowing how things worked and being able to fix them.
It was for this reason that Gabriel followed in his father's footsteps once he finished with school, learning how to build and repair watches with the utmost care. He was good at it--incredibly good--and took great pride in his work, going as far as to insist on calling the objects of his craft "timepieces" and centering his life around his profession without leaving much room for making friends. Yet, even while taking so much passion in his work, it was hard for Gabriel to forget how much he had wished to be better than mediocre during his childhood, especially with memories of his mother telling him he could be something more, much more, if he only put his mind to it.
For over ten years, Gabriel's life continued this way: routine, solitary, and completely unextraordinary. His father passed on and his mother became the only important figure in his lonely existence, a woman who continued to urge him to become someone spectacular, who told him he could do amazing things if he just tried, and who, through all her misplaced encouragement and lack of acceptance for who he was now, did more to destroy Gabriel's self-confidence than she did to strengthen it. Truly, Gabriel did want to be great, and his mother's persistent urgings continued to make him feel inadequate and unfulfilled despite his single obvious and exceptional talent. Thus, over the course of his lifetime, Gabriel developed a severe inferiority complex along with intensely repressed anger, the only respite from which was his childhood hope that one day someone would come to him and tell him he was somehow special.
And one afternoon, when an elderly Indian man stopped by in his Brooklyn workshop to speak to him, he realized that day had finally come. Dr. Chandra Suresh was a geneticist who claimed Gabriel was on a list of people he believed to have a unique genetic code, a code that granted those people incredible talents and abilities. Gabriel was ecstatic to hear this and told Suresh that he'd be happy to be the doctor's Patient Zero (first subject) and undergo non-invasive tests on his brain that would study what kind of power he had and what he could do with it. After all, reading Suresh's book on the subject of these emerging abilities was the first thing he did upon encountering the man, and seeing all the possible powers he might have was like a dream come true for him.
But that dream crashed and burned all too soon. Despite Dr. Suresh's testing his brainwaves over and over again, he was unable to find any anomalies that would correspond with powers he had hypothesized and Gabriel hadn't expressed any kind of unique abilities during their time together. After trying to gently break the news to him by asking him why he had decided to stay a watchmaker despite his reservations about it, to which Gabriel responded with an explanation based on "evolutionary imperative" and fate based on needs rather than wants, Suresh finally told Gabriel that his being on the list had perhaps been an error.
Gabriel was completely devastated. He lashed out at Suresh over it, his desperation causing the pent-up anger he'd felt towards his own insignificance his whole life to finally boil over. Gabriel threw down files to the floor of others who the doctor also believed had powers--was Suresh going to give up on them too, Gabriel demanded; was he going to present them with amazing possibilities and then rip them away just as quickly?
Gabriel stormed out of Suresh's apartment, hurt and angry and utterly crushed, and it wasn't until he reached the sidewalk that he realized he still had the post-it note with the name and number of one of the others Suresh wanted to contact, a man named Brian Davis who possibly had the power of telekinesis.
On a whim and not completely sure why, Gabriel decided to call the man and invite him to a meeting in his watchmaking workshop under the pretense of being a geneticist himself. When Davis arrived, Gabriel fumbled for a pseudonym to cover up his true identity, and, seeing the brand name on a watch he'd been steadily customizing and crafting for seven years, he calmly introduced himself as Sylar.
Brian believed Gabriel's lies and displayed to him a small bit of his telekinetic power that he'd been able to control; he pushed a mug from one side of a desk to the other solely with the power of his mind. Gabriel was struck with shock and awe, but when he praised Brian's ability as incredible, the man only responded with an admission of fear of his own ability and asked Gabriel the desperate question of whether or not he could help him get rid of it.
It was in that moment that Gabriel finally understood his own ability and finally felt the urge of his true evolutionary imperative. He could see how things worked, and as he stared at Brian Davis, pathetic and fearful but with such great potential, he felt as if he was looking at the man through the lens of his crafting glasses. Humans were just the same as watches: they were broken and they had pieces that would be better off in something more deserving. Gabriel knew exactly how to fix them, and he knew that to do so would be no more than the natural progression of the species.
If man has a soul, it's in the brain, Suresh had told him, and Gabriel now knew the full truth in that statement. When Brian's eyes were averted from his, Gabriel struck him in the head and murdered him in cold blood, then proceeded with the grisly task of cutting open his skull and removing his brain, studying it as one might an incredibly complex how-to manual.
And then, finally, Gabriel became special.
When he came back to Suresh and displayed to him his newly "discovered" power of telekinesis, he no longer wore his dark-rimmed glasses or his mousy clothes and had about him an air of self-possession and confidence that he'd lacked before. He was no longer insignificant Gabriel Gray: he was Sylar, a man on a dark mission of evolutionary importance, and as the doctor apologized for having given up on him and Sylar convinced him that he needed to join him in his quest to find others with abilities, he wore the broken watch of his namesake, a reminder that he was no longer a lowly craftsman whose life was leading nowhere. He had ascended far beyond that and now would become even more.
Sure enough, he was soon traveling with Suresh all over the world and helping him contact others with amazing abilities, though as they did so, Sylar made sure he left a trail of bloodshed in their wake. (Interestingly, he kept in touch with his human side by sending his mother souvenir snowglobes.) Though Suresh might have realized on some level what was going on, it wasn't until a few months later that he was able to face the truth that he'd created and been feeding a monster, and he finally fled from Sylar back to Brooklyn, taking his list of names with him.
Sylar didn't easily let him go. His desire for power was an addiction now, a necessity he couldn't control, and anyone who prevented him from furthering his goal was betraying his trust and ideals. He tracked down Suresh and killed him as easily as he had the others, taking what names and addresses he could find and proceeding to pursue the leads on his own. He traveled across a dozen states and half a dozen bodies until he arrived in California, where, after murdering a mother and father by the name of Walker, he attempted to pick up the useful power of their daughter before he was halted by the efforts of a particular L.A. cop. He then proceeded to Midland, Texas, where he stole the power of eidetic memory from a diner's waitress before moving on to Odessa.
By now, along with telekinesis, Sylar was a powerhouse of super-abilities such as cryokinesis, mental razor-cutting, electrical interference, and enhanced speed, strength, and stamina. However, a cheerleader at a nearby high school supposedly had the power of spontaneous regeneration, which, if acquired, would essentially make Sylar invincible and unable to die, an intriguing prospect indeed. So, on that particular school's Homecoming night, Sylar prowled the grounds until he came across his target. After a mix-up in which he killed another girl, he gave chase to the real cheerleader, who joined up with a dark-haired man as they fled out of the school. The two gave Sylar more trouble than he'd initially expected, and the man stayed back to hold him off so the girl could get away. In the struggle, both men fell a good twenty-five feet onto concrete and a badly injured Sylar resolved to make a tactical retreat.
As it turned out, a retreat wasn't such a great idea; as he limped away, Sylar had the misfortune to encounter two other superpowered individuals who worked for an elusive and powerful ability-monitoring organization known as the Company. The villain's powerful physical abilities were no match for the agents' mind-manipulating ones, and he was knocked out cold and imprisoned in a maximum security facility where his powers were constantly nullified. He made an escape attempt that was half-successful in the fact that he managed to kill one of the Company's agents, but ultimately, he was rendered powerless.
All the carnage Sylar had caused in Odessa earned him the wrath of the Company agent overseeing his captivity, Noah Bennet, whose daughter, Claire Bennet, happened to be the very cheerleader who Sylar had been trying to kill. For the next two weeks, the murderer was heavily drugged, monitored, and experimented on until he faked his own death under the watch of a Company scientist and was able to break loose of his restraints. He killed the scientist and then waited in hiding for Bennet, disabling him and locking him in the prison cell while he used the ID in Bennet's wallet to figure out his home address. Sylar then proceeded to the Bennet household while posing as a paper delivery man for the Company's front, hoping he'd be able to ambush Claire and take her power after all. Instead, he encountered her mother, and unfortunately for Sylar, Bennet escaped from the cell and drove him off before he could kill anyone.
After all that, Sylar was at the same square he'd been on back when he'd gone after Claire, and now, forced to abandon the cheerleader's power, he only had one person left on his list of possible targets: A man named Zane Taylor who lived in Virginia. After this, he'd have no way to figure out where those with powers were located, though he did know of a man who could help him: Mohinder Suresh. Mohinder was Chandra's son and had become a geneticist in his father's footsteps; more importantly, he was the man who had the computerized groundwork for generating the complete list of superpowered individuals that Chandra had never given to Sylar.
As luck would have it, Zane had just called the professor over to discuss his awakening abilities when Sylar got to him and killed him. From there, it was easy for Sylar to pose as Zane when Mohinder showed up, and Sylar played the part so well that the doctor seemed to have nary a clue that the man in front of him was the very murderer who he was trying to protect others from and who he sought to take vengeance on for killing his father.
Sylar could see the father-like-son parallel in Mohinder and knew he could use the young geneticist the same way he'd used Chandra: He convinced Mohinder to take him along on his journey to find others with abilities, his objectives being the gradual acquirement of powers, the eventual acquirement of the list, and, on some human level, trying to find a power-potential-exploring partner in Mohinder that he had lost in Chandra.
The two of them made their way from Virginia to Montana, Sylar conversing with Mohinder all the while and subtly observing him and testing him for the same "hypocrisy" that had made the elder Suresh an expendable traitor to the villain's cause. Sylar told the professor his own personal philosophies as presented as "Zane's" epiphanies, gaining Mohinder's trust all the way up until they met Dale Smither, another woman on Mohinder's list. Dale had the power of super-hearing, and after talking to her and agreeing to run tests on her the next day, Mohinder and Sylar stayed at a nearby motel.
That night, Sylar ambushed Dale at her autoshop and murdered her, acquiring her power and subsequently struggling with its painful side-effects. Because of both his arrogance and his desire to set another test for Mohinder, he left the body in the shop, and he and Mohinder "discovered" it the next morning when they went to speak to Dale again. Mohinder was horrified, recognizing Sylar's M.O., though Sylar was able to convince the geneticist to only call the authorities once they were on the road so as not to cast suspicion on themselves.
Mohinder and Sylar traveled back to Brooklyn together, and it was in Chandra's old apartment that Sylar became the deceived rather than the deceiver. Mohinder knocked out Sylar when the villain wasn't expecting it, and when Sylar came to, he found he had once again been drugged with power-nullifiers. Now left at the geneticist's mercy, Sylar listened as Mohinder explained how he'd found out "Zane's" true identity due to the trail of bodies that he'd left, and he extracted Sylar's spinal fluid to test and try to fit into the groundwork for the list. To the geneticist's surprise, Sylar's DNA opened up a whole new list of names due to the killer having been the foundation for Chandra's formula. However, Mohinder's triumph was short-lived: Sylar counteracted the power-nullifiers and attacked Mohinder, attempting to extract information about the list, but before he could get anywhere with him, he was once again interrupted.
Peter Petrelli entered the apartment, the same man who had prevented Sylar from taking Claire Bennet's power, and, apparently, another man who had taken on multiple abilities, including regeneration and invisibility. Peter tried to save Mohinder with these powers, but Sylar managed to kill him by embedding a shard of glass into his head with telekinesis. However, before he could take his power, Mohinder managed to sneak-attack him and knocked him out, leaving the apartment and taking Peter's body with him.
When Sylar came to, he realized that Mohinder had destroyed the list of names and that he now had no way to continue his search for those with powers. Angry and devastated, he decided to find Isaac Mendez, a precognitive painter Mohinder had mentioned whose address was publicly published. When he found Isaac, the man didn't resist being killed, claiming that he knew he was meant to die as a part of stopping Sylar from doing something horrible. After Sylar murdered the man and took his powers, he painted a future where he took the power of a radioactive man--the same radioactive man, it seemed, who had the power to blow up New York like in the prophetic painting on Isaac's floor.
Sylar now realized what Isaac had meant: He was destined to blow up New York City and leave it a nuclear wasteland. However, instead of embracing this future, Sylar found himself terrified, realizing that such a massacre of human life in no way fit his moral code of natural selection. He murdered to gain power and to destroy the weakest links in the species; he didn't murder simply to murder. He didn't want to kill so many who were innocents.
Frightened, he called Mohinder Suresh for guidance on what to do, but when the geneticist proved (understandably) doubtful of his repentance, Sylar instead called his mother, his strongest link to his old life and a way he could re-familiarize himself with the safe persona of Gabriel Gray. Sylar now realized that to continue on his quest would lead to disaster, and after cleaning himself up and once more taking the appearance of his watchmaker self, he headed off to his mother's apartment in Queens.
There, his mother was delighted to see him and his newest snowglobe gift, though the situation deteriorated all too quickly. Sylar, now Gabriel again, once again saw how much his mother resented the normalcy of his father's old work, how she never listened when he told her what he didn't need, and how she never saw him for who he really was. After all, although Gabriel never realized it on a conscious level, his bloody crusade wasn't for his sake but for his mother's: he wanted so desperately to meet her standards of being extraordinary that he'd destroyed his humanity in the process. Now, the only barrier between him and becoming a normal person again was his needing her approval.
Unfortunately, it was approval that Gabriel could never have. He begged her in his own way for her to accept him, for her to allow him to stop his addiction, but his pleas were only met with her unwavering beliefs that he could be a greater man. Finally, giving up on getting approval and realizing that he should show his mother that he really was special, he showered her with a snowfall of faucet-made snowflakes with his power of cryokinesis, to which she responded with awe and wonder. However, things soon turned sour when Gabriel's repressed anger at his mother began to show through his powers, and he half-unintentionally hit her with one of her snowglobes.
Terrified by Gabriel's show of unworldly powers, his mother locked herself in her room as he begged her to talk to him, to forgive him. When his mother reemerged, however, she wasn't so merciful: she demanded that he get out of her house and declared that he wasn't her real son, that he was damned. A fight began as Gabriel implored her to listen, a fight that ended in his mother being accidentally stabbed.
Gabriel stood back, horrified at the genuine accident, and the next thing he knew after his mother fell to the ground, a young Japanese man was trying to kill him with a samurai sword. However, Gabriel--now Sylar again--didn't easily let him, even though he ordered the man to kill him in his grief, and before he knew it, the man was gone again.
Then, Sylar had to deal with the loss of his mother and the fact that he had killed his only connection to his human life. The idea that he was destined to massacre so many people suddenly didn't bother him anymore: now, he knew it was his destiny. He knew that blowing up New York would be the ultimate way to prove his importance.
Sylar's next move was to track down Ted Sprague, the man with the power of radioactivity. In the process of doing so, he also came across Claire Bennet and Peter Petrelli, who, it turned out, had survived death due to having picked up Claire's power of regeneration. Sylar used Ted's FBI 'wanted' status to report him and get him confined, and once he'd done so, he killed him, taking his power. He knew that he was supposed to have a showdown with Peter Petrelli, the other superpowered man, but he wasn't sure where, so he stopped by Isaac Mendez's old loft to look for clues in the prophetic paintings. There, he ran into Ando Masahashi, a friend of Hiro Nakamura, the Japanese man who had attacked Sylar earlier and who had the power of bending time-space. After Sylar had disarmed him, he found a comic book that the man had been carrying--a comic book that apparently foretold of Hiro killing Sylar. Disbelieving that he could be bested by someone so weak, Sylar proceeded to interrogate Ando on where he could find Peter Petrelli, but was interrupted by Hiro, who managed to escape with his friend.
Frustrated but still determined, Sylar decided to head to Kirby Plaza, the location he had painted where he would supposedly meet Peter and fight him. There, he came across Peter and Noah Bennet, disarming the latter and facing off with the former. During their fight, a variety of other people with superpowers, including Matt Parkman and Niki Sanders, intervened, and Sylar ultimately ended up being pummeled by Peter once he'd taken on Niki's power of super-strength. However, in the middle of things, Peter's hands began to glow with the tell-tale sign of uncontrolled radioactivity, and both of the foes realized once and for all that Peter was the one who was destined to blow up New York.
Sylar himself was amused and smug, though that smugness vanished when Hiro Nakamura appeared and indeed stabbed him through the chest. Sylar fell, mortally wounded, though he made sure to stop Hiro from aiding Peter in preventing the explosion before he finally lost consciousness.
---
When Sylar came to, it was in the unlikely setting of a Maui beach. Next to him was a beautiful woman who introduced herself as Michelle (formerly Candice, an agent of the Company) and who revealed that their current situation was an elaborate illusion created by her power. Sylar demanded the illusion be taken away when she told him that in reality, he was in extremely bad shape due to his wounds from Kirby Plaza. Indeed, when Sylar became aware of his true surroundings, he couldn't do much more than scream in pain, and his subsequent discovery that he couldn't use any of his powers angered him far beyond even his realm of sanity. He managed to take Michelle off-guard once he'd healed a bit more; he then killed her and studied her brain, but after he did so, he found that he was unable to use her power. Thus, when he wandered out of the shack he'd been held captive in and found himself in the middle of a Latin American jungle, it was no wonder that he didn't last long on his feet.
Powerless, Sylar struggled through the terrain for three days until he came across a road and finally collapsed from pain and exhaustion. Luckily for him, he was found before he could die from starvation or be run over, and the three travelers who had discovered him took him along in their car. Among those travelers was a pair of twins, Alejandro and Maya, who, to Sylar's astonishment, were traveling to the United States in order to meet Chandra Suresh. He introduced himself as Gabriel Gray and began to gain Maya's trust even though Alejandro remained suspicious of him. He told them that he knew Dr. Suresh personally and that he could guide them to him, all the while wondering what their power could be.
Sylar soon realized what that power was when their third traveling companion, Derek, came across a front page article that declared the twins as murderers. Sylar killed Derek before he could alert the authorities, however, and when he confronted the twins about their 'wanted' status, Maya's eyes turned black and Sylar felt as if his brain was tearing itself apart from the inside. Once the twins stopped the power from killing him completely, Sylar realized just how useful Maya's ability could be, and he decided to help them all the way to New York. His plan was to acquire Maya's power once he'd forced Mohinder Suresh to find out how to get his powers back for him.
They made their way to the United States, Sylar manipulating Maya and encouraging her to use her powers all the way. She was a new plaything for him, and he enjoyed making her think that he was in love with her as he studied her power and its limitations, even as her brother continued to show him immense distrust. Finally, they (SOMEHOW) made their way to New Jersey, where Alejandro discovered an article about the search for Gabriel Gray, who was suspected of killing his mother. When confronted by the twins about the article, Sylar admitted to the murder, explaining truthfully how it had all been horrible accident as a way of manipulating Maya to trust him and to turn the twins against each other. His tactic worked: Maya told Alejandro to go back to home when he refused to trust Sylar, and Maya fell even more in love with the villain and his "empathy."
Alejandro didn't let Sylar take advantage of his sister so easily. He ambushed Sylar in his hotel room and the ensuing fight ended in Sylar burying a knife in Alejandro's heart. Maya was none the wiser, thinking her brother had gone back to Mexico, and the pair continued on to New York City. Once there, Sylar took Maya to Mohinder's apartment and found a hostage there to use against Mohinder: Molly Walker, the girl who he'd tried to kill all the way back in Los Angeles. He also found Mohinder's laptop, and on it, information about a power-nullifying virus called the Shanti virus, as well as the fact that Mohinder's blood could cure most strains of it. Additionally, when combined with Claire Bennet's blood, it could apparently cure anything.
Once armed with this information, he called Mohinder, threatening to kill Molly unless he helped him. When the geneticist showed up, it wasn't long before Sylar's true aims were exposed to Maya, but by then, Sylar already had a gun to Mohinder's head and Maya had no way to kill Sylar without also killing the doctor and Molly.
The group, under Sylar's control, made their way to Mohinder's laboratory, where the doctor took a sample of Sylar's blood and determined that the Company had given Sylar a special strain of the virus. In the meantime, Maya discovered from Molly (a clairvoyant) that her brother was indeed dead. When she confronted Sylar about it, he shot her.
Figuring that Maya's dying body was a good way to test the "heal everything" blood cocktail that Mohinder had, he ordered the doctor to inject her with it. The blood indeed seemed to heal Maya's wounds, but before Sylar could inject himself, Elle Bishop, a Company agent with the power of electricity, tried to save Mohinder and the others. Sylar grabbed the blood vial and shot at Elle as he made his escape, but before he could get away, he was hit from behind and fell through a wall of glass.
He woke up in a sterile room soon after.
(NOTE: During the course of the Heroes series, an alternate future is chronicled where the bomb destroys New York and the world becomes a much darker place. In this future, Sylar acquires Candice's illusion power and poses as Nathan Petrelli, becoming the future's corrupt President of the United States. Sylar finds so much physical and political power in this future that he actually decides to have the rest of the super-powered population exterminated in order to get rid of his competition, which is now the only obstacle between himself and staying the most important person in the world. Luckily, Hiro Nakamura (both of him) stops this future from occurring.)
Detailed personality description:
Sylar is, in so many words, evil and completely insane. He cares only about himself and furthering his own goals to attain power, and he subscribes a selfish, skewed version of Darwinism to justify his actions. He believes in destiny and he believes in earning one's place in the world, and more than anything, he desires to be special. However, there is also a decidedly human side to Sylar that, while it it doesn't excuse the atrocious deeds he's committed, at least does explain and reflect the misfortune and consequent insecurities that ultimately pushed him to the brink.
To begin, the main pillar of Sylar's characterization--that he wants to be special--is in fact not his own desire in and of itself. His drive comes from a need to be accepted by his mother, and as mentioned exhaustively in the personal history, he received some severely mixed signals while growing up as a child. His father insisted he follow tradition and take over Gray & Sons, the watchmaking workshop he owned, while his mother continually encouraged Gabriel to be something more, someone better, and who only saw her son as someone who could be, not as someone who was. These circumstances didn't help when added to the fact that Gabriel had a hard time socializing with other people from the get-go, and his lack of human connection only worsened his inferiority complex and desire to be recognized.
The result of this sob story is a ruthless, cold-blooded monster. The amount of times "kill" and "murder" are mentioned in his personal history is enough proof of how evil he is, and his self-righteousness over the deeds he's committed only adds to his depravity. To clarify, though, Sylar is a unique serial killer in the fact that he doesn't kill for the sake of killing. Every time Sylar has attacked someone in the canon (with the exception of Claire's mother) he has done so for a purpose, either to gain a new ability, get rid of a problem, or to attain information. He isn't fazed at all with the act of murder, but it isn't his driving goal.
Sylar's real objective is acquiring power--mostly in terms of abilities, though the alternate future shows that his ambitions aren't limited just to that. Sylar has taken Darwin's theory of natural selection, and, like so many others in history, twisted it to justify his bloodthirst. Sylar believes that if someone has powers, they have to deserve those powers, and if he's able to take those powers through force, it's simply a natural progression of the species--a survival of the fittest. Those who can't keep their abilities don't deserve them, and even in his most vulnerable moment, when he shouts at Hiro to kill him, he doesn't allow it since he perceives Hiro as being too weak to go through with it.
Aside from his evolutionary aims, hurting people psychologically is Sylar's favorite pastime. Although Sylar himself is a truly conscienceless sociopath, especially after the death of his mother, he has a keen awareness of the emotions of others and how he can direct their motivations. An expert manipulator, Sylar can not only influence the actions of others with his words, but also takes immense pleasure in doing so. When a new acquaintance is unaware of his true nature, he enjoys seeing how far he can take the new relationship without being discovered; when he's found out, he purposely provokes that acquaintance to see what kind of reaction he can get out of them. He stares anyone he's speaking to in the face and examines their reactions to his words (even Mr. Muggles); in fact, it sometimes seems as if he sacrifices caution for the sake of having fun with the person he's "playing" with.
Sylar, with his duplicitous personality, is also a master of dramatic irony. As a villain, he often knows more than the characters do, and as a villain, he loves reinforcing his own feeling of superiority through that informational advantage. He'll often make comments ironic only to himself and the audience: "Well, golly, they seemed so..." "You sure it isn't a trick or an illusion or something?" "What happened to this... Sylar?" Sometimes, being so obvious about his own hidden agenda gets people suspicious of him, such as with Mohinder, but then again, it's all part of Sylar's complex (and contradictory) method of manipulation.
The truly interesting thing about Sylar's manipulation is that he uses genuine, heart-bearing honesty in order to deceive. When he's traveling with Mohinder, all of the personal philosophies he shares are truly his own, and while Mohinder doesn't know the real reason why "Zane" is thanking him for taking him on his journey, Sylar really is grateful that the professor is leading him to new victims. And, when Maya confronts him about his mother's death, the grief and remorse he shows is real, as is his explanation of it having been a horrible accident. This use of honesty is perhaps the most devious way he's learned to gain someone's absolute trust and betray it just as quickly; he also seems to love seeing people's reactions to painful truths rather than lies.
As far as intelligence, Sylar isn't stupid by any means, but his arrogance, desire for power, and his love of testing others usually clouds his judgment and undermines his ultimate goals. For example, he leaves Zane's body without thinking that Mohinder--a brilliant geneticist--would check the papers, and he also doesn't seem to have any kind of plan to prevent Mohinder from discovering Dale's murder. While Sylar is extremely good at deceiving others and earning their trust, he isn't so great at harvesting the fruits of his labors without getting caught in the act. Ultimately, he's probably not as brilliant as he'd like to think.
Sylar is also a loner when it comes to his nefarious plans. Not once in the series has he made an alliance with anyone for any reason other than deceit, and I doubt he would ever do so with much ease. He's in the murder game for his own personal gain and part of his role is getting his hands dirty. He doesn't mind.
While Sylar has two distinct personas--one of his serial killer self, Sylar, and one of his human watchmaker self, Gabriel Gray--he does not have multiple personality disorder. His personalities are simply two different sets of masks he wears depending on how he wants to approach a situation, and they aren't fractured or uncooperative in any way. He is simply a watchmaker who decided to be murderer; his only internal struggle between good and evil took place when he went to visit his mother, and those sentiments are long gone by now. Nowadays, when he introduces himself as "Gabriel," he's doing so to remind himself of his lack of powers, and the show of niceness that comes with the name is just that: a show. As far as his other name, he's extremely possessive and aggressive about being called "Sylar" once he's revealed himself to someone, mainly because of the superiority over others that it symbolizes.
(NOTE: While Bennet puts forth a Company assumption that Sylar has become more deranged with the changes he's made to his DNA, I disagree with that theory. Sylar seems just as crazy as he did the day he murdered Brian Davis, and I feel that a disagreement is reasonable, given the fact that the Company scientists weren't able to discern much from Sylar's DNA anyway.)
Detailed physical description:
Sylar is tall, lean, and really hairy. (No, seriously, he is.) However, he still manages to be fairly attractive in a wholly creepy way, even with his big eyebrows and weirdo nose, and he typically has stubble and looks kinda unkempt. And evil.
That is, unless he's putting on an act or taking on his old identity as Gabriel Gray -- then, Sylar is extremely good at looking and acting the part of whoever he's pretending to be, and as Gabriel specifically, he slicks back his hair, wears dark-rimmed glasses, and generally looks like a dweebus rather than a psycho killer. Generally, he wears whatever fits his current persona or whatever he can find, though when he's out killing, he seems to prefer a black coat and baseball cap.
Canon Timeline:
I'll be taking Sylar from the middle of the second season finale--more specifically: when Elle hits him from behind with a lightning blast and he's sent headfirst through a wall of glass. At that point, he'll still be under the impression that he can't access any of his powers due to his being infected with the Shanti virus, but I'd like to have it that he was actually cured of the virus by the powers that be before waking up, if that's okay.
Powers in the canon:
Though Sylar wields a slew of powerful abilities with skill and ease, such as telekinesis, cryokinesis, mental razor-cutting, electrical interference, eidetic memory, melting any material, precognitive painting, radioactivity, super-hearing, enhanced speed, enhanced strength, enhanced stamina, and several more that we haven't even seen yet on camera, only one of them is truly his, and that is the power to see how things work. It's only because he learned how to harness this original power that he was able to gain all the rest, though it's otherwise a modest ability to be sure, and so subtle that not even he or Chandra recognized it at first.
Sylar has used this power all his life as a watchmaker and displays what he can do with it in the show when he first meets Suresh and is able to tell his watch is broken just by glancing at it; he doesn't need to see its inner workings and he's able to tell how it's broken just by listening to its ticking for a couple of seconds. He humbly explains the skill as "just a talent I have" at that point, and it can thus be assumed that it's an ability he'd been aware of for a very long time but which he just didn't put much stock in.
It can also be assumed that since the power extends all the way to seeing how human brains work, it must also allow Sylar to see the inner workings of things other than watches, such as locks, appliances, electronics, and perhaps even human emotions. As mentioned in the personality section, Sylar shows a keen interest in examining the reactions of others to his intimidation, most notably Mohinder Suresh, and he seems to have a very good understanding of people's wants and weaknesses and what he can do to manipulate them. His knowledge sometimes seems inherent, perhaps bordering on psychic, such as when he goads Bennet at the Company facility by threatening Claire even without having any way of knowing Bennet's overprotectiveness of his daughter.
So there you have it: All Sylar really has at his core are supernatural powers of observation and examination, and he instinctually knows how to fix things. If he hadn't figured out that he could study brains to get powers, he probably would have continued to lead a really boring life.
(NOTE: Although it seems to be the opinion of the fandom at large that Sylar has to physically eat the brains to attain their power, I don't believe that theory is true. The series has shown evidence time and time again that Sylar knows how things work and wants to see how the brains work, and though we've been shown the bloody hands Sylar has after taking on a new power, we never see him with a bloody mouth.)
Power limitations in the RP:
I think the Landel's environment would be an excellent place to explore what would happen to Sylar if he were knocked back to his single original ability and left with a blank slate where his extra powers should be. In season 2, we saw what happened to him when he had absolutely no powers at all, but this would be slightly different: He would have the power of "seeing how things work and how to fix them," but all of the others that he's picked up over the last year and a half would vanish.
Sylar's original ability is so subtle in and of itself that I actually don't think it needs to be limited much. He obviously wouldn't be able to glance at the walls and know how to climb over them or anything, and he wouldn't know how to open the doors that specifically need keys, but he would make a pretty damn good lockpick if he could get his hands on some tools, and he'd be able to rewire whatever cog-based devices or electronics that he got his hands on even if he's unfamiliar with their circuitry. He'd also still be able to read people's emotions and weaknesses with ease, though he wouldn't be able to gain any knowledge outside of the realm of realistic--though precise--observation, which he seemed perfectly able to do without powers anyway during his roadtrip with the Wonder Twins.
As far as his being able to study brains to acquire powers: Given the place I'm taking him from, Sylar would initially still be under the impression that he has absolutely no powers and thus would think that even if he did get his hands on a brain, he would be unable to pick up any kind of ability. That, at least, would prevent him from his usual antics for his first couple of days or so at Landel's, and he'd focus on manipulating others rather than trying to rack up the kill count.
Once Sylar realizes he does have his original power and that he could try picking up extra abilities again, I'd have it so that he could feasibly kill a patient and acquire the current, weakened version of their power to use for himself, and in the unlikely circumstance that he'd be able to kill more than one other patient, the potency of his abilities would be inversely proportional to how many powers he'd picked up. For example: If he picked up a healing ability and then got a mind-reading ability, not only would his rate of healing decrease, but any kind of thoughts he'd hear would be fuzzy, painful, and nearly inaudible.
(Of course, he wouldn't be able to kill any fellow patients unless I had already worked out a death scene with the victim's player and the moderators, and seeing as that kind of situation is very rare, I doubt multiple acquired powers will ever be a major concern.)
Non-magical skills and abilities:
As mentioned exhaustively, Sylar is an extremely talented watchmaker and even now takes pride in his ability to "restore timepieces" despite his rejection of his old life. He's also apparently very good at putting on an act of being someone he isn't to the point that he managed to fool Mohinder and Maya for a while even if he came off as an OBVIOUSLY REALLY CREEPY BASTARD to the audience.
Sylar is also very well-read in a variety of evolutionary and philosophical theories, although he sees all of it through the narrow lens of his selfish ideals. I'm guessing any research he did was on his own and that he never got a college education; he was pigeonholed as a watchmaker from very early on in his life, and his parents were more overbearing than they were wealthy or sophisticated.
Speculation on plans of action:
Sylar will find some reasonably gullible targets and manipulate his way through Landel's, trying to figure out how to get a cure for the Shanti virus he thinks he still has. He'll most likely only latch onto one or two people at a time, and only if they have highly useful attributes; with both Mohinder and Maya, he was focusing all his energy on gaining the trust of a single person so that he could control them and get something valuable from them. Despite the confined setting, he'll still take as much pleasure in testing the relationship as he normally does, and he'll be quick to screw his current "friend" over whenever it becomes necessary. (Whether or not one of his manipulative relationships becomes romantic/sexual (at least from the other person's side) depends on who he leeches off of.)
As far as his canonmates, he'll probably avoid them when he's trying to stay low for the sake of his manipulation, but he'll also be very smug and confrontational to establish that he's still the big dog in town and still intimidating as all hell. If he meets them before he realizes that everyone's powers are nullified at Landel's, he'll probably act as if he still has powers, which would end badly.
During Nightshift, Sylar will wander around just like everyone does, probably with whoever he's decided to leech off of. Once he realizes that he still has his original power of "seeing how things work," he'll put it to good use in unlocking doors and other small but useful tasks, and of course, he'll want to try getting his hands on a brain again. Whether or not he'll be successful at taking someone down remains up to the circumstances with dropped characters at the time.
Also, while Sylar only ever looks out for himself, he has too much pride to ever sell out to a higher authority unless he absolutely needs to.
Speculation on long-term character development:
Sylar is the kind of character who loves being in control and having his way, so his immediate reaction to waking up will likely be rage at "the Company" that infected him and which has now re-confined him. However, once he realizes the futility of his situation and the fact that the Company isn't in charge, he'll probably simmer down and use the coping mechanism he's become used to when he can't use his powers: Manipulation.
Having a new toy to play with will calm Sylar down some, and he'll also gradually realize the sheer amount of super-powered individuals at the Institute. He'll be inwardly ecstatic at the prospect of so many abilities to make his own, and his new goal will be to regain his powers rather than to simply escape.
As time passes, Sylar's personality won't change much, though he'll probably become increasingly subdued towards those who don't know him as he spends more time without his powers. (He'll mope.) His objectives will fluctuate pretty wildly, however, switching between plans of manipulation, betrayal, and intimidation. How things play out in the long run will depend on if he gets any new powers or not. I certainly don't plan to play Sylar as needing or seeking "redemption," since I feel he's too far gone to ever want to go back, but I would like to explore the different facets and motivations of his surprisingly complex personality.
Sylar Third-Person Sample:
Sylar almost felt sorry for them. People, so many people, meandering across the streets of New York from one building to another like ants in a giant catacomb of a colony. Sometimes they had purses, sometimes coats, but they all had one thing in common: They were no more than part of a whole. They were insignificant, unmemorable. They would turn a corner, he'd never see them again, and he didn't really care.
But Sylar was one of them right now. He wondered what he would have pegged himself as - probably 'the man with the jacket and the woman on his arm.' He would have written himself off without a second thought, and that notion bothered him. He wasn't special, not now, but... the woman. She was special and she didn't even know how special; she was ignorant in so many ways, but that was all right because Sylar would fix her. He'd see how that lovely power worked and then take it and end her misery. Everyone would win - or at least he would win, and that's all that really mattered.
"Is it close?" Maya asked, accented voice strained and excited as they walked towards the Brooklyn apartment building. "Are we close to Dr. Suresh?"
Sylar stopped and stared long and hard at the front door. The place brought back memories both good and bad, crushing and freeing. He had the vague feeling of a pigeon returning to its manmade roost before he squashed the emotion entirely. This was his mission, his triumph. Chandra might have helped bring him into being, but the creator had betrayed the monster long ago. His powers were his and his alone; he just needed help from another Suresh to get them back.
He turned to the woman and gave her a smile.
"We're already here, Maya. Just think: Soon, you won't have to worry about your power ever again."
His voice was warm, comforting, and though he felt hunger in his eyes as he stared at her forehead, he knew she couldn't see it. She was as blind as Mohinder had been, though his carelessness had come from self-righteous stupidity rather than foolish hopes.
He walked towards the door and opened his wallet as soon as she turned her head to look at passing cabs. She was too overjoyed to notice that he was jimmying the lock open with a credit card, and when the keyhole clicked and he told her to come in, she didn't catch the furtive glance he made towards the street before he closed the door behind them.
It didn't take long to get to the apartment. It was like a second home to Sylar, a place of birth, though he supposed it'd be a good idea to knock and see who was there. He was glad he did when a teenage girl answered the door, and as Sylar looked over her shoulder into the place, he noticed something different about it: a sense of being truly lived in. There were pillows and blankets on the couch and toys strewn over the floor in front of the TV.
So, the professor had a family now. Interesting.
"Hi," Sylar finally turned towards the girl and put on a wide smile, all too aware of Maya's beaming face behind him. "I'm Gabriel, a friend of Dr. Suresh's? You must be..." He glanced at alphabet magnets spelled out on the refrigerator. "...Molly's babysitter."
"Yeah?" The girl said, blowing out some bubblegum. "Well, he's not here right now, so--"
"No, no, that's all right," Sylar said, taking a step forward and beginning to move into the apartment before the girl could protest. "Maya and I... we've come a long way to see him. We can wait, we can... take over babysitting duties."
"Listen," the girl said, faltering, "I dunno if I should--"
"We can call Dr. Suresh if you'd like," Sylar cut her off as politely as he could. He turned to his companion, the one he truly had to keep in the dark. "Maya, could you go look after Molly while I explain things? The bedroom's over there."
Maya nodded and gave a meek smile before she moved to the back of the apartment. Sylar looked back to the girl and motioned her into the hall; she was such a young, gullible thing, and it was because of those faults, that normalcy, that there'd be no harm in freeing the human race from some flawed genetic traits.
The paperweight he'd grabbed off Suresh's desk worked well enough, and after Sylar had moved the evidence and left it in the building's supplies closet, he pulled out the bloody note he'd taken from the girl's pocket. Really, the professor should have been more careful about leaving personal information around.
"She understood?" Maya asked anxiously as Sylar re-entered the apartment and approached the back room's bed. "She knows how important it is that we speak to him, to Dr. Suresh?"
"Why yes, of course," Sylar replied, eyes fixed on the girl in the bed. He remembered her now - Molly Walker, one of the fish who got away. It seemed as if today was his lucky day, and as he sat on the edge of the bed and pulled out his cell phone, he wondered just how he could toy with the moralizing doctor while he still thought Sylar had power. He dialed the number, then waited, staring at the girl and the promise of power to add to his own. This was good. He had a hostage now; he had a way to make the doctor feel fear.
"Hello?"
Sylar smirked.
"Hello, Mohinder."