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In Metropolis, there is a man in a dark suit. He's of a sort of non-descript middle age, not specifically young but nowhere near old.

As for what he's doing?

He's looking around. Learning. Absorbing local color. Picking up the lingo (which isn't as hard as it should be) and the customs. Occasionally having a meal somewhere and libating to that ever so beneficent monarch of the dead, Hades, just so he can explain the custom to curious onlookers. Carefully working minor miracles wherever it'll do the most good-- and once again, advertizing for the once and future Lord of the Underworld. Looking at maps, trying to figure out where he can start an underworld on this continent.

It's not his world. There's a lot to learn.

Good thing he got the brains in the family.

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"Really."

Sylar grins.

"Let's just say I'm testing a hypothesis."

It's blatantly obvious that he doesn't consider Hades a threat.

Perhaps because both those coffees are beginning to not-so-unobtrusively freeze over.

As is, you know, everything else in a ten-foot radius.

If he can handle heat, how is he with cold?

... Is this little overpowered mortal punk actually trying to get into a pissing contest with a god?

There's frost on Hades's suit.

The guy inside doesn't seem bothered.

That preternatural good health doesn't seem to be working, just now. Not hypothermia or anything so silly-- it's just that the systems aren't really what you'd call running.

He picks up a coffeesicle and it steams in his hand before he sips it.

There's a waitress staring now, and a busboy asking her what's wrong.

One more long sip, and Hades pours the rest out into the planter, although it's nearly frozen again before it hits the dirt. "Praise unto Hades for his blessings." The words have sharp edges in them.

Yes.

Yes he is.

And it's incredibly obvious that he thinks he'll win.

A short wave of his hand, and the waitress and busboy are considerably more... inside out than they just were.

Sylar does not approve of distractions.

"But is he around to hear you?" asks Sylar coolly, in a voice that would be frozen even if the ground weren't.

And now there are screams.

It's a sidewalk cafe, on a nice spring day-- sure, it's a little postapocalyptic, but people are trying to have normal lives, and you don't expect the scary shit to come waltzing up to your customers and turning your staff inside out and splattering gobbets of pathology in your latte.

Hades stands.

"That's enough." It cuts through the screams, though people are still fleeing for the relative safety of the indoor cafe.

Mortals are dead. Well, that was going to happen anyway. It's sort of the point of being mortal. But this guy? This guy is going to wish he was dead when Hades gets done with him. (In no small part because he's not killing him outright until he's got a nice interesting Underworld punishment worked out for him-- which means no killing him until he's got the Underworld set up, so Hades can supervise what happens to his shade.)

The cold melts away, pushed back by a heat as oppressive as a blast furnace-- hot enough to char Hades's suit, to smoke around him, to curl around his feet like incense smoke, to make his skin look... grayer, colder. The mortal diguise is not completely abandoned yet, but he's let the edges blur. No flames yet-- just smoke.

"You want to screw around with me, you little overpowered punk? Fine. Leave the locals out of it."

That was bad form, after all. And Hades wanted those potential worshippers.

"As you wish," Sylar hisses through clenched teeth, and pushes the cold.

He can't stand up to a god for long. Perhaps not at all.

But he's too much of a stubborn, arrogant bastard not to try.

Which means the air itself is close to freezing by Sylar's hands.

It reminds him obliquely of the battle with Peter Petrelli. Well, he won that, didn't he?

Of course he did. He's got Petrelli's power, doesn't he?

Let the air freeze. Hades will warm things up.

Oh, only a short burst of divine fire, but hot enough to dispell the cold-- and unless he's pulling something else off, the force of the hot air meeting the cold air is probably enough to knock Sylar on his ass.

Really, Sylar should be thankful Hades didn't just render him down into soup.

It knocks Sylar on--

--on another stolen power.

Is this the best you can do? asks the smirk.

Sylar, meanwhile, is suddenly a good deal less there than he was before. It's not visible, but he's decided that intangibility would be a good power to take advantage of right now.

On top of the cryokinesis. And the hovering.

And the way the ground crackles and rises up like a fist to close around Hades.

Chunks of rock and concrete and asphalt wouldn't even ordinarily be a challenge for Hades, who slips through the stone fist as though it were made of nothing more solid than smoke.

Or as though he were.

The last of the mortal look has slipped away, now, and Hades manages to look... surprisingly majestic, for someone so clearly cheesed off.

"So lemme ask you something, just to be clear. Where are you going with this? I mean, what, right? You're mortal. I'm a god. Do you have any idea how high up on the food chain you'd have to be just to fight me to a standstill?"

At least he admitted he's a god?

"I was tired of hearing you pretend. If you're that high on the... food chain," he allows himself to smirk at the choice of metaphor, "why bother walking around in a human skin? It doesn't fit. It's not right. You're a god? Act like one."

No, Sylar doesn't realize just how incredibly counterproductive that speech truly is.

Hades does not have a facepalm icon to suit image to action. Pretend the headdesk icon is a facepalm icon.

He does not mention bulls, swans, showers of gold, old men in need of somewhere to stay the night, or any one of a thousand guises he and his relatives have collectively taken on in order to blend better among mortals.

Or to screw with them. Or just to screw them. Whatever.

"And who are you," hey, was he quite that tall a second ago? He's like, ten feet tall, now. "To tell me how a god acts? To tell me to get back in my proper place?" Aside from the fact that, as a god, Hades can do whatever the blazes he wants, there's the manners issue. "Do I tell you how to do your job, huh?"

Brave cafe patrons are staring through the window, if from behind stacked tables and chairs and anything else that looked like it might make a good barricade. The less brave ones are looking for a way to get out that won't set off the emergency exit alarm.

"No, you don't. And you're clearly not fit to," Sylar sneers. "For someone with such power, you're remarkably pathetic."

He can keep up. Hades is ten feet tall? Sylar will float five feet off the ground.

That puts his head one foot two inches above Hades', if you don't feel like doing the math.

Hades is gone.

Wait, no he's not, he's behind Sylar.

"See, that's the funny thing about arrogant mortals and power.

"They're like fools and money."

Ooops, was Sylar using that intangibility? He's not anymore. And won't again. Maybe someday one of Hades's loyal followers will-- waste not, want not.

"Soon parted," he says, laying a heavy hand on Sylar's shoulder.

Sylar whips around and snarls.

And, because he apparently lacks the common sense Epimetheus gave a gerbil, backhands Hades across the face.

Ordinarily Hades would go intangible and let Sylar's hand sail through him like a hot knife through... thick smoke.

Ordinarily he sees these things coming, however, so Sylar connects fairly solidly. Really, really solidly, because you have to be pretty darned there to stand in midair the way Hades is. It's entirely possible Sylar just hurt his hand.

Someone with incredibly sharp hearing might hear one of the gawking cafe patrons breathe "Oh no he didn't. Oh shit."

When Hades snarls at you, it's with a shark's mouthful of dangerous teeth. And with a brief flash of red-hot flame (in direct defiance of the laws of thermodynamics, if Sylar's still interested). But only a brief flash.

"Temper, temper. Might want to rein that in. Take it from me, it's not easy being a hothead." Fingersnap.

Sylar may be feeling considerably less nuclear-powered-- Hades will just tuck that little super power away where it can't get out and create Japanese monsters or Marvel superheroes. "Luckily I can help with that."

He did hurt his hand, as it happens.

Luckily for Sylar, Hades hasn't taken the regeneration.

When he clenches his fists and the heat doesn't come, there's a blank space occupied mostly by rage--

--and then it does.

Thank you, Charlie McGee.

For the pyrokinesis, and for the fact that it's fuelled by rage.

Those cafe patrons had better duck, because Sylar and Hades are now standing in a column of fire that scales rapidly past red into orange, yellow, and then eye-searing blue-white.

Beneath their feet, the pavement bubbles.

And the window of the cafe drags itself free of its frame to flow through the air, vaporizing as it hits the edge of the fire.

If Hades doesn't like being pimp-slapped by an upstart mortal, how will he feel about being sandblasted by a storm of silicon vapor moving just this side of the speed of sound?

Except that, he can see coming.

The superheated sandstorm blasts through Hades, sending him streaming like a candleflame for a few seconds before he snaps back into his proper shape.

"You're just not that clever, are you?"

Hyelokinesis is an unusual word, and an even more unusual power.

"I mean, you shouldn't play with glass."

When Hades removes it, the cloud of vaporized glass starts to slowly fall-- only to be stopped by a bank of smoke flung from Hades's outstretched hand (smoke shouldn't do that!).

"Somebody could get hurt!"

Hey Sylar.

Blob of liquified glass coming your way like a large, hot pie to the face.

Think fast!

He's not quite fast enough to block and not quite sane enough to dodge.

So the column of fire dissipates as Sylar makes a strangled noise halfway between a growl and a scream. Anyone in the audience who reads Niven might be tempted to draw a comparison with the kzinti; certainly the bared teeth are feral enough.

At least he had the presence of mind to fling his hands up in front of his face, which means that mostly what he's regrowing are his arms and the front half of his torso, while the glass freezes brittle and is flung down to shatter violently on the pavement.

Breathing hard with half-seared lungs, he takes a moment to stop and think. He can't just keep throwing power at Hades if the damn god is going to keep taking them away. He needs a plan.

He may even need to retreat and regroup, though the very concept leaves a bitter taste in his mouth.

"And you know, I just thought of one more thing I don't want you doing." Besides dying before Hades has somewhere secure to put him. The fire's gone, so the huddled mortals in the cafe have decided to run, mostly through the open window and down the street. There's a body flung over a table, flesh bubbled and blistered.

Hades will have to hurry if he wants anyone to see this.

"Can't have you getting creative with your fellow mortals, now, can we?" Fingersnap.

If Sylar wants to affect the carbon-based, he's going to have to find a way to do it besides what he took from Darla Wood.

"That's just not fair."

One of the fleeing patrons turns back long enough to see Sylar, with an incoherent shout, blast forward into Hades with all of Nathan Petrelli's stolen speed.

You scream and you leap, the man thinks, and can't help but spare a moment's admiration for the sheer bloody-minded tenacity of a mortal taking repeated potshots at what is clearly Hades, God of the Underworld.

But it's only a moment, and then he's running again.

That connects.

And in reaching to strip Sylar of his speed, Hades discovers it's connected (if loosely) to Sylar's flight. Sure, he could untangle them, if he weren't already pissed off. Flight, he wants to leave the mortal with, for now. If he doesn't strip all his powers, flight will be the easiest escape route.

Not far off, however, is the ability to transcribe the future. That one will be more useful in Hades's hands than Sylar's, once he finds someone to bestow it on. (Even if it does run the risk of pissing off Mort.)

When they come to a stop, Hades snatches it away before disappearing-- though this time in a column of flame instead of smoke.

"You," he tells Sylar, "Are like a goodie bag of superhuman abilities. Annoying as you are, I just can't wait to find some worthy mortals to bestow some of this stuff on."

Yes. Yes, he is trying to keep Sylar angry. It's hard to think clearly when you're angry.

"Those are mine," the mortal spits, turning around again. "Too much of a coward to insult me to my face?"

The taunt is a distraction, though it's not immediately clear from what.

He lands-- no. He hovers a bare inch above the road, pressing a hand to the cracked pavement.

A dead second's space wherein absolutely nothing happens.

And then the ground is melting in a swath that heads straight for Hades' feet.

Hey, if he can hit him, he can liquefy him, right?

Provided the power works fast enough-- and it's always been one of Sylar's quickest, if one of the least useful until now.

Hades stands his ground, because what, like he's afraid of a little quicksand? "Oh, right, yes, born with all these gifts, that's you. I'm sure."

It's possible there's a lesson to be learned there, about not getting out of the way.

Where there was a god, suddenly there is a puddle.

Granted, it's a puddle on fire, but he went down without even an I'm melting! What a world!

Sylar grins, a bloodthirsty, terrifying grin.

No, he's not stupid enough to think that's it for Hades. But he won. He outfought a god, and however temporary his victory, he's going to enjoy it while it fucking well lasts.

Pity there are no fellow mortals left nearby to hear him laugh.

The flame, after a moment, goes out.

Except for Sylar's laughter, things are silent for a long, long moment.

Yeah, remember that planter over there? The one that got frostbitten and then fried and has generally seen better days?

It erupts, and forms a rough throne, and the being sitting in it is clapping with that particular hollow sarcasm that just one person's applause carries. "Now that was something. Melting. One of the classics, really. Very impressive.

"Who'd you steal it from?"

This time there's actually an accompanying gesture, like pulling a drawer open. The loss this time is not swift and sudden, but slow. Drawn out.

It may, in fact, be painful, or just like slowly losing something that had felt like a part of you for some time.

Guess what, being liquidated is not pleasant. (Not permanent, but so few things are, to gods.)

"If-- you're as-- powerful-- as you claim, find out-- for yourself."

It does hurt. It hurts, and he can't get away from it, and he doesn't know where he finds the strength to taunt.

"My brother's girlfriend can do that much." Derisively. From Sylar's point of view, Gabriel (however cherished) seems so... young. Fragile. The same goes for Intuition, by extension.